If We Had Time And No Money,

If You Are Trying To Transform A Brutalized Society Into One Where People Can Live In Dignity And Hope, You Begin With The Empowering Of The Most Powerless. You Build From The Ground Up.

What I Search For Continuously In My Art Is Adequate Language, Language I Hope Can Stand Beyond Any Particular Occasion. What I'm Finding Is That In Our Increasingly Dysfunctional U.s. Society, Marvelous Poetry Is Being Written - Out Of And Amid The Dysfunction.

The Kind Of Poetry That Interests Me Is Intellectual And Moral And Political And Sexual And Sensual - All Of That Fermenting Together. It Can Speak To People Who Have Themselves Felt Like Monsters And Say: You Are Not Alone, This Is Not Monstrous. It Can Disturb And Enrapture.

What Would It Mean To Live In A City Whose People Were Changing Each Other's Despair Into Hope?-- You Yourself Must Change It.

It Is The Suffering Of Ambivalence: The Murderous Alternation Between Bitter Resentment And Raw-edged Nerves, And Blissful Gratification And Tenderness