I lived in the studio apartment that I bought for four years before I bought it in 1989, so I was already in it. I began living there in 1985, so I've had the same address and phone number since then.

Who gets to choose what battle takes her down?

I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.

Clearly, once the student is no longer a student the possibilities of relationship are enlarged.

Did you love well what you very soon left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.

My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.

Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.