There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.

Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.

Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.

The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold.

I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.

The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code.

Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.