The Library Is An Arena Of Possibility,

When We Are Touched By Something It's As If We're Being Brushed By An Angel's Wings.

I Thought, After The Pulitzer, At Least Nothing Will Surprise Me Quite That Much In My Life. And Another One Happened. It Was Quite Amazing.

If We Really Want To Be Full And Generous In Spirit, We Have No Choice But To Trust At Some Level.

To Me, A Poem Is Almost Like Someone Whispering To Another Person, Or You Hear The Whispering In Your Head. I Hope With My Own Poems That The Reader Feels A Connection, Soul To Soul, That'll Help Us All Feel A Little Less Alone On The Planet. And It Does Have The Power To Direct Change. A Writer Can Make The Word 'dark' Be Something Positive. You Can Relieve A Word Like 'hysterical' Of Its Misogynistic Implications. You Can Make The Language Your Own. That's What Poetry Is About.

I Grew Up In Ohio, Where Civil-rights Accomplishments Had Already Begun To Accelerate Before Martin Luther King Appeared. In Hindsight, We Know That Many People, Black And White, Were Instrumental In Changing The Jim Crow Status Quo On All Levels.