Who wants to put together something that will bear some relationship to the vision or memory or experience or story or idea or dream or whatever.

Well, one thing I'm really interested in, when I'm writing, is being accurate.

I have never thought I could take it, not even for the children. It is all I have wanted to do, to stand between them and and pain. But I come from a long line of women who put themselves first.

I'm not asking a poem to carry a lot of rocks in its pockets. Just being an ordinary observer and liver and feeler and letting the experience get through you onto the notebook with the pen, through the arm, out of the body, onto the page, without distortion.

I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain

Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.