In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.

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.