America made us heroines not wives. We hid our ladyness to save our lives.

If someone gives you permission, they can take it away. I give myself permission.

Children when they ask you why your mama so funny say she is a poet she don’t have no sense.

My Mama Moved Among the Days My Mama moved among the days like a dreamwalker in a field; seemed like what she touched was here seemed like what touched her couldn’t hold, she got us almost through the high grass then seemed like she turned around and ran right back in right back on in.

I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn’t come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, “Ahhh.” That was the first poem.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that’s a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

I don’t go get a poem. It calls me and I accept it.

Intellect doesn’t translate across cultures; intuition does.

All people, even one’s own children, come with baggage. When they’re little, you have to help them carry it. But when they grow up, you have to do that difficult thing of setting their baggage down and taking up your own again.

Things don’t fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.