I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.
We tend to be so bombarded with information. . . This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry. . . . poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.
If you can't be free, be a mystery.
Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?
Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In colder to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.
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Published Sources for Quotations Above:
F:
R:
In "New York Times," sect. 4, p. 7, 20 Jun 1993.
A:
Canary," lines 1 - and last line, 1989.
N:
K:
Interview on her being named poet laureate; in "New York Times," 20 Jun 1993.
