If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.

My sister accommodates me, never reproaches me with her doctrine, never tries to change me. She accepts and loves me, despite our differences.

I listen to the gunfire we cannot hear, and begin this journey with the light of knowing the root of my own furious love.

It's important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.

I have more questions than answers in this world as do most poets and writers. The field of memory we exist in is absolutely encompassing and is both a question and answer. It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.