What I'm trying to do is to tell young people that I teach them how to breathe before I teach the haiku. That one breath, that one breath, because the haiku keeps you alive. It keeps you going. If you learn how to breath the haiku, you learn how to breathe. If you learn how to breathe, you're much healthier.

The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don't wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait. I think it's the greatest art.

Come windless invader I am a carnival of Stars, a poem of blood.

You can't have relationships with other people until you give birth to yourself.

...I write to keep in contact with our ancestors and to spread truth to people.

And I cried… for all of the women who stretched their bodies for civilizations, only to find ruins.

The most fundamental truth to be told in any art form, as far as Blacks are concerned, is that America is killing us.