Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

I am not political as a person.

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

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.

Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care; that's what poetry is supposed to do.

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

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