It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years - or longer.

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.