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

It might be a bad thing, not to know what's going on in the world. I can't say I really approve of it.

Because a poem is not written while running or while answering the phone. It's written in whatever minutes one has. Sometimes you have half an hour.

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.

Well, 'The Wellspring' was written from 1983 to 1986. And it had a section in the beginning that was poems that began from others' experience.

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

She'd crack A joke sharp as a tin lid Hot from the teeth of the can-opener, And cackle her crack-corn laugh.