When I was younger, yes, there was a part of me - and I wrote about that bit in Among the White Moon Faces - that wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be accepted by my brothers and to be their peers.

The city and nature, the built stone and the found stone, concrete and slate, poetry addresses them all democratically.

Heterosexuality - whichever gender you are - says that the other gender is very important to you.

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer."

I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe.

These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.

It's as if I'm setting aside the husband and son, you know, the patriarchal world, for the world of the muse. This is the world of writing.