When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

Women's work is always toward wholeness.

Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.

Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.