The first function of violence in Native American literatures is simply to acknowledge that violence is implicit, like gravity and sunlight, in the world and our relations with the world.

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?

We're into the era of desktop bureaucracy, where people sit at computers building websites and analyzing data rather than listening or reading.

Popularity isn't just something that happens. You have to give something in exchange for it, and that's the dangerous part of the process.

Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing.

Nature, or the world, or reality, is what mythology is all about.

I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph.