In Sister Swing, the two sisters have boyfriends and they go to bed with them, but the descriptions are not graphic. They're minimal. The sex is not graphic in the way that DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover has all these graphic passages.

No one, evidently, except me has found "No Alarms" poem ironical that an obsessive theme in my writing was - and has continued to be - not being able to write.

I'm not sure why my muse is female, except when I am deliberately playing against that figure.

My muse is very often, in my mind, a nagger. She nags me.

Breath and brevity are sisters; the long-winded is an enemy who muffles your heartbeat.

Just because suddenly you have a sabbatical doesn't mean that the writing occasion comes to you.

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.