In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.

But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important.

As I think about anyone or anything -- whether history or literature or my father or political organizations or a poem or a film -- as I seek to evaluate the potentiality, the life-supportive commitment and possibilities of anyone or any thing, the decisive question is always where is the love?

There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.

The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet