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.

I came to realize this weird projection: you are much more passionate about hating something outside of you when you know that something is also in you.

I had a couple of Asian readers and other folks tell me, "Oh, you have a lot of sex in your writing."

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.

The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.

The body in defense against male appropriation expresses itself through work in writing, and the work in writing produces the book. So it's a different form of creation and generation that may be viewed as creation without male contribution as a component or challenge.

It's why muse is so impatient with me. I don't ever go to her until after the teaching or whatever is over.