Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.

For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

[Speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.

Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world.

When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.