I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior.

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

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

I am not political as a person.

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.