I am not political as a person.

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

Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.

My poems are almost all written as Diane. I don't have any problems with that, and if other women choose to identify with this, I think that's terrific.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.