The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think

As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language.

We need everybody and all that we are. We need to know and make known the complete, constantly unfolding, complicated heritage that is our black experience. We should absolutely resist the superstar, one at a time mentality that threatens the varied and resilient, flexible wealth of our Black future.

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.

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.

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

I am a stranger, learning to love the strangers around me