“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:so much has been destroyedI have to cast my lot with thosewho age after age, perversely,with no extraordinary power,reconstitute the world.”

“Only to have a griefequal to all these tears!There's not a sob in my chest.Dry hearted Peer GyntI pare away, no hero,merely a cook.”

“A lot is being said today about the influence that the myths and images of women have on all of us who are products of culture. I think it has been a peculiar confusion to the girl or woman who tries to write because she is peculiarly susceptible to language. She goes to poetry or fiction looking for her way of being in the world, since she too has been putting words and images together; she is looking eagerly for guides, maps, possibilities; and over and over in the ‘words’ masculine persuasive force’ of literature she comes up against something that negates everything she is about: she meets the image of Woman in books written by men.”

“I choose to love this time for oncewith all my intelligence-from "Splittings”

“I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons”

“We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out of control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us kinship where all is represented as separation."(Defy the Space That Separates, The Nation, October 7, 1996)”

“Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness”