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.

I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.

When I write, I put aside the heterosexual world to admit a muse that is a woman-loving-woman female.

Poetry has roots, and sometimes they are aerial. Sometimes they are buried.

My recent retirement from full-time teaching to the status of research professor at University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) encouraged me to come out, so to speak.

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

I'm surrounded by men, and the muse is complaining that I have neglected her.