I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

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.

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.

If you can't be free, be a mystery.