For me, poetry is a form of activism. And that word enables the labelers, and also gives them a rash.

Having financial independence does not increase one's chances of independent, artistic creation whatsoever. Our conditioned behavior toward mimicry for the sake of market forces is an amazing syndrome. The watchtowers guide us well.

Even the art of quoting is a conservative art most of the time, in order to propel the same ideas and the same self-congratulatory importance.

Since so much of the poetry machine is consumed in and with the mirroring and the reproduction of what is already preexistent, I don't understand why such paranoiac conservatism is dedicated to labels. It's a way of controlling the "other," to label them.

Poetry at large in America is naturally a reflection of the American system and culture. That's my possibly narrow view of it, or reductive view. But I think for as many portals for critical consciousness in the poetry world and in the American spirit that exist, there's also an over-arching, dominant mirroring, in poetry, of the corporate structure, the capitalist enterprise.

What I'm trying to say is: it gets boring when nothing meaningful is discussed about it. It's the same thing when a woman poet writes about suffering - it's a "woman's tendency to depression and grief." It's not a human, universal tackling of something that exists in all of us. It's suddenly a "woman issue."

I don't think art is in danger of dissolution or disappearance, and we don't trust enough in its ability and power to create critical consciousness as much as we think we do.