I feel like the secretary to the morning whose only/
responsibility is to take down its bright, airy dictation/
until it's time to go to lunch with the other girls,/
all of us ordering the cottage cheese with half a pear.

I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.

You trip over a word while carrying
a tray of vocabulary out to the pool
only to discover that broken glass
is a good topic.

In a world where cultures and religions are recklessly facing off, Sholeh Wolpé writes careful poems that cast a light on some of what we all hold in common.

I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.

The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.