“I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.”

Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?

Women’s art, though created in solitude, wells up out of community.

Made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language – this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.

It is the thirtieth of May, the thirtieth of November, a beginning or an end, we are moving into the solstice and there is so much here I still do not understand.

In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.

It is as though the risks of the poet’s existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.

Even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?

Passion for survival is the great theme of women’s poetry.

Behind all art is an element of desire…Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art.

For now, poetry has the capacity – in its own ways and by its own means – to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.

Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single “I” or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.

If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.

In a society where some people are far more educated than others, in which public education is ill-funded – here I am speaking of the U.S. – while we build more and more prisons to incarcerate youth who ought to be in school.

I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

Marriage is lonelier than solitude.

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate

Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

The blues are what I’ve turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.

Stop postponing stress relief, and start prioritizing your wellbeing.

How disheartening and yet a kind of relief that you too turned out to be just like all the rest. How freeing it is to watch the sun rise and set without you.

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.

I use the studio as my drug. That’s where I relieve everything at – the studio.