Like most activists and artists, I have difficulty establishing priorities. The tension between being active in the world and needing solitude is one… - Irena Klepfisz

Though the Middle East is "far away," Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza remain close to our hearts, to our Jewish identity. We discuss the U.S. government's role in the region, the connections between defense spending and the homeless, between Third World people's solidarity with the Palestinians and the tensions between Jews and other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. But these are not, I believe, at the core of our involvement. Israel retains a special place on our list of priorities because it is a Jewish state and we are Jews and cannot disengage ourselves from its fate. It pushes us psychologically, gnaws at our sense of personal responsibility. It keeps us constantly focused and conscious of our Jewish identity.

From the age of twenty, my ego has been invested in poetry. For me, the prospect of expression through poetry transforms solitary silence and an empty page into sheer pleasure. I feel unafraid, knowing I can break all the rules, invent my own forms. No matter what persona I take on, my voice remains accessible and recognizable. There is no artifice, no pose, no sense that I have to transform myself into someone else. As a poet, I remain comfortably disrespectful. I experiment, take risks which sometimes work and sometimes don't. For years I have had no such courage in essay writing. It has seemed an iron-clad genre that I could neither escape nor fit into.

There's an enormous amount of protectiveness -- of sort of like, the three classic writers. You're not -- can't say that they were sexist. Why? I mean, why were they -- were they really, I mean, the only three men in the last century who were not sexist? It just doesn't make any sense.