The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.

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.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.

Poetry dovetails contradictions.