But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

Poetry is one of the essential structures of civilization - carrying myth, ritual, 'tales of the tribe' and the essence of language.

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

We are authors, all of us, concerned with beginning, with making, with sources and substance.

Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

So, I've never been politically correct, even before that term was available to us, and I have really identified with other people who don't want to be read as just a black poet, or just a woman poet, or just someone who represents a cause, an anti-Vietnam war poet.