In recent poems, I have abandoned the theme of not being able to write for an even more obsessive subject, the nature of language, particularly English, in the formation of my imagination and being.

Poetry has roots, but they are sometimes cut off and still poetry is written.

I don't really get into the power sufficiently, and that's also a problem for me.

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.

The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and incitement of specular curiosity and fascination.

Now that I'm more middle class, I have access to consumer goods. I do enjoy feminine frippery, feminine doo-da, stuff like that.

When I spoke at the 2012 Contemporary Women Writers' Conference in Taipei, I thought it offered an appropriate moment and site to announce my new manifesto10 and profession - to be a writer.