All New Learning Looks At First Like

I Believe That Words Can Help Us Move Or Keep Us Paralysed, And That Our Choices Of Language And Verbal Tone Have Something - A Great Deal - To Do With How We Live Our Lives And Whom We End Up Speaking With And Hearing; And That We Can Deflect Words By Trivialization, Of Course, But Also By Ritualized Respect, Or We Can Let Them Enter Our Souls And Mix With The Juices Of Our Minds.

I Think Of Poetry As Something Out There In The World And Within Each Of Us. I Don't Mean That Everyone Can Write Poetry - It's An Art, A Craft, It Requires Enormous Commitment Like Any Art. But There's A Core Of Desire In Each Of Us And Poetry Goes To And Comes From That Core. It's The Social, Economic, Institutional Gap That Makes It Difficult.

Those Who Speak Largely Of The Human Condition Are Usually Those Most Exempt From Its Oppressions - Whether Of Sex, Race, Or Servitude.

The Mother's Battle For Her Child With Sickness, With Poverty, With War, With All The Forces Of Exploitation And Callousness That Cheapen Human Life Needs To Become A Common Human Battle, Waged In Love And In The Passion For Survival.

Reality, The Oppressor's Tongue.