But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.

That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes.

So, poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.