I am opposed to Orthodoxy in all its forms. Orthodoxy—“right” thinking, “right” dogma—depends on the assumption that your group, your authorities, al… - Alicia Ostriker

What I try to do in all of my work, in my poetry, in my prose, in my teaching, is try insofar as I can, to operate on the principle of killing the censor and bringing what's supposed to be kept unconscious into consciousness. Discover what is supposed to be silenced and bring it out into the open, into language.

“I am and am not a Jew." That is the opening sentence of The Nakedness of the Fathers. I love that sentence. I think it grabs people, and it should. I want my readers to feel the kick of contradiction, the torsion of tension. Not only in myself but in themselves. Contradiction and tension are part of life. Where would poetry be without tension? There is tension even in the music, the rhythms of poetry, between the pull of traditional meter and the urge toward open form. And what's wrong with contradiction? You don't hear Whitman saying he wants to resolve his contradictions. Not at all. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Life is like that. Face it. Denial is death.

Let us never suppose that the structures of our human minds can contain God.