I've spent hundreds of hours working over words, and part of me, a large part of me, has a desire to do something else.

If the Buddhist's job is to be detached, I think that the artist's job is to be both detached and attached.

Sometimes a person thinks he's attached to one thing and he's really attached to something else.

You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.

I've been active in a minor way compared to professional activists. I was a labor leader. I led two labor strikes. I've manipulated boards. I've led marches. I've done many things.

I have left out what I don't remember or don't know. Temperament, fear, shyness, obedience, kindness.

All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.