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.

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

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.

Free verse is chained in sentence-to-sentence links and breaks free in line breaks.

That was the ballad of suburbia: give me loud to drown out the silence.

Run, John, and work, the law commands, Yet give me neither feet nor hand.Much better new the Gospel brings:It bids me fly and gives me winds.

A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.

I think that people vibe off your energy and I'm a pretty mellow person.

Every time I see Dan Quayle I feel like buying a vowel.

As far as I am concerned I would rather spend the rest of my life in prison than marry again.

The doings of men, their prayers, fear, wrath, pleasure, delights, and recreations, are the subject of this book.

It gave me great pleasure to think that I could take wood, make it good, and make people like Rockefeller buy it with paper money.

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.

Writing the songs is always emotional and most of the vocals on there are the first three takes from the demos, because they give so much more. You're in that moment, so it speaks for itself.