I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

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

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

You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.

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.

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.