Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.
Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.
disguisepoetrytso-art
Sour MilkYou can't make itturn sweetagain. Onceit was an innocent colorlike the flowers of wild strawberries,and its texture was simplewould pass through a clean cheesecloth,its taste was fresh.And nowwith nothing more guilty that the passage of timeto chide it with,the same substancehas turned sour and lumpy.The sour milkmakes interesting
poem
It was hard for them to accuse their wives of infidelity when their rival was an invisible man.
infidelity
I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.
people
I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why.
peoplepoetryreadingwork
I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior.
peoplepoetry
Other people have noticed more of an evolution than I have and so I'll try to tell you where I'm coming from and also relate it to what I think other people perceive.
evolutionpeople
So, I've never been politically correct, even before that term was available to us, and I have really identified with other people who don't want to be read as just a black poet, or just a woman poet, or just someone who represents a cause, an anti-Vietnam war poet.
blackpeoplepeoplewar
Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care; that's what poetry is supposed to do.
poetrypowerwomen
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.
culturepoetrytso-art
I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that.
historylanguagepoetry
Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.
languagetso-love
I think one of the things that language poets are very involved with is getting away from conventional ideas of beauty, because those ideas contain a certain attitude toward women, certain attitudes toward sex, certain attitudes toward race, etc.
beautylanguageracewomen
I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.
languagepoetry