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

Signs of a maddening system of writing and counting that calibrates the values of something the poet does not yet know. Praxis is therefore poetics.

I do want to do the entire alphabet. There's in [Walker's Alphabet] a poem called "A Life" in that grouping. I was going to change that title to "A."

There are a couple of poems I've written with masculine muses, very often the muse to me is a female.

In actual fact, I have been an academic - a college and university teacher and scholar - for much of the last 45 years, and only rarely a writer.

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

I don't like crows. In the poem "C," crows are predatory, killing other birds and so forth. But in my morning walks, there were always crows, particularly at certain times of the year. And they're very aggressive, very visible and loud. They're not at all likable, but they have to be dealt with. They are part of the picture, the art in the morning. You cannot deny their reality.