Silence can be a planrigorously executedthe blueprint to a lifeIt is a presenceit has a history a formDo not confuse itwith any kind of absence

It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment--that explodes in poetry.

but from here onI want more crazy mourning, more howl, more keening-from "A Woman Dead in Her Forties

and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim uswhich will we claimhow will we go on livinghow will we touch, what will we knowwhat will we say to each other.

Love, our subject:we've trained it like ivy to our walls.

Whereever a poet is born enduringdepends on the frailest of chances: Who listened to your murmuring over your little rubbish who let you bewho gave you the books who let you know you were not alone

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.

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out of control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us kinship where all is represented as separation."(Defy the Space That Separates, The Nation, October 7, 1996)

Reading and writing aren't sacred yet people have been killed as if they were