I tell you, if you feel strange,

strange things will happen to you:
Fallen peacocks on library shelves

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

Since she's discovered
men would rather drown
than nibble,
she does just
fine.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.