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.

Writing a poem is unwriting a knot, like untying a shoelace that is clubbing your foot.

New formalism is writing with language as flow, like the flow from a dam, running through a desert that has had no rain for decades.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.

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

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

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

Working women went through a time when they believed that.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.

Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't expect it in a woman's text.

Live theater to me is much more free than the movies or television.

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.

From the time I was a kid, I always knew something was going to happen to me. Didn't know exactly what.

I do not have OCD OCD OCD.

When wishes are few, the heart is happy. When craving ends, there is peace.

I was not a very good football player when I started out.

You are probably at your sanest when you come to the place where you abandon all else but your desire for God.

There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

I don't care about my image. I'm already paid. I've already got my money, so why worry about my image?