“Poetry is music for the human voice. Until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, it has not come into its own.”

“I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.”

“Soft you day, be velvet soft, My true love approaches, Look you bright, you dusty sun, Array your golden coaches.Soft you wind, be soft as silk My true love is speaking. Hold you birds, your silver throats, His golden voice I'm seeking.Come you death, in haste, do come My shroud of black be weaving, Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet, My true love is leaving.”

“It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”

“I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.”

“Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.”