If we even tolerate any oppression of gay and lesbian Americans, if we join those who would intrude upon the choices of our hearts, then who among us shall be free?

I am working never to be late again.

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

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

If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.