The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I don't even know.

I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career.

I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.

Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

Twice in his life Eugene Victor Debs took the long leap to the Ultima Thule of prison, passing beyond the realm of the acceptable into the nonacceptable, from respectability into the criminal community of the monster who was an enemy to the people.

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there.