I have some weak poems in that new collection, which is why I'm not ready to send the collection out yet.

Working women went through a time when they believed that.

The inimitable writer Maxine Hong Kingston published a book in 2002 with the title To Be the Poet. However, in contrast to the transformatory distinctions Kingston makes between the conditions of being a prose writer and "the poet," my multigenre impulses incline me to a broader transformation: to be a writer.

Saul Bellow has that character in Henderson the Rain King say: "I want, I want, I want!"9 I remember reading this passage years ago and thinking, yes, that's the human.

My brothers were my peers, but they were not the preeminent male figures in my emotional life.

Singing has nothing to do with poetry, except as twins separated at birth.

I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.