If you don't have a bed, or a dresser or a wall, or a book or a toy you are oppressed. An African American in a white world. A Jew in a Christian world. A gypsy. A Native American. A Chinese American. Let's say, you were born deprived.

Teaching poetry, teaching as such, is worthy - if back breaking.

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.

Men aren't called pricks, but women are called cunts.

Political means so many things. We are political willy-nilly. Political poetry is an easy invitation to disaster. But then so is love poetry. But we are a little more patient with bad love poetry.

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.

Some poems are art because of their passion.