Not that a poem can "hurt" someone the same way a physical blow can or even a mean remark can...I just felt unsure that my tone would be taken the right way and/or unsure of my own writing, that I couldn't maintain the tone I wanted.

If you are my friend and say to me, "Please don't write about this," I won't.

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.

Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

In addition to writing in received forms, I have also had fun making up forms - Möbius strips and visual poems, particularly.

While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an "A," as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published.