A poet articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.

There comes a time when only anger is love.

Writing poetry is a process of discovery...you can smell the poem before you see it....Like some animal.

When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise.