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"The title of the poems was The Only Bar in Dixon. We sent it out to The New Yorker on a fluke, and they took them and printed all three in the same issue."
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"Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
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Personal Development

"I used to carry about with me a German map-case filled with poems."
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Personal Development

"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words."
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Personal Development

"Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems."
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Personal Development

"As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes."
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Personal Development

"I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made."
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Personal Development

"I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me."
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Personal Development

"Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together."
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Personal Development

"Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide."
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"Why does one always ask a writer why they stopped? I am sure everyone finds in any drawer a few dear poems."
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"The townspeople outside the reservations had a very superior attitude toward Indians, which was kind of funny, because they weren't very wealthy; they were on the fringes of society themselves."
Society

"My poems were just kind of all over the place. They had no focus, no location, nothing. Kind of a series of images that could have been set anywhere. A lot of the poems were just exercises for myself."
Focus

"I wrote a lot in study hall to while away the hours."
Study

"Our literature is in great shape."
Literature

"Before, Indian people had been so defeated, they were always looking for outsiders, for the government, to somehow come in and fix things. But now, they seem to realize that they're the only ones who can save themselves."
Government

"I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal."
Work

"The economic piece is still missing, since it's so hard to attract industry to reservations, but spiritually and educationally, they're doing just fine. Each tribe has a community college now, and they teach the language, they teach the traditions."
College

"Nobody would take checks from Indians, nobody would give them any credit, and nobody would let them drink in the bars. There was a rudeness, a brusqueness, with which the Indians were treated constantly. At a very young age, that had entered my consciousness."
Age

"I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians."
Being

"I wander around, get the lay of the land and try to imagine what kind of people would have lived there in that historical period. What would they eat? What kind of clothing would they wear? How did they shelter themselves? How did they get around?"
People
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