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.

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.

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

I am not political as a person.

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

I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.

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