I write out of respect for the natural world, recognizing that humankind is not separate from nature. Some of this work connects the small world of h… - Linda Hogan

When I discovered writing, it was...like being dropped into water and finding that you're an excellent swimmer - that you love the water and you love to swim. I think when I discovered poetry it allowed me to step into my real life, my real self- the body, heart and soul of being alive.

My characters actually create me instead of the other way around.

Writing begins for me with survival, with life and with freeing life, saving life, speaking life. It is work that speaks what can't be easily said. It originates from a compelling desire to live and be alive. For me, it is sometimes the need to speak for other forms of life, to take the side of human life, even our sometimes frivolous living, and our grief-filled living, our joyous living, our violent living, busy living, our peaceful living. It is about possibility. It is based in the world of matter. I am interested in how something small turns into an image that is large and strong with resonance, where the ordinary becomes beautiful. I believe the divine, the magic, is here in the weeds at our feet, unacknowledged. What a world this is. Where else could water rise up to the sky, turn into snow crystals, magnificently brought together, fall from the sky all around us, pile up billions deep, and catch the small sparks of sunlight as they return again to water?