The idea that eroticism and spirituality should be separated is a travesty of both. Read the Song of Songs, a poem which is utterly erotic and utterl… - Alicia Ostriker

I love the idea that I write poems that are porous. That have openings and loopholes and...invite people in rather than telling them something.

Poetry gives you permission to put into language what your reality is without sounding like an op-ed. I don’t think I ever get very far from politics; sometimes what I write is overtly political, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s always there. Just like being a Jew is always there. The difference between writing prose and writing poetry for me is that when I’m writing prose I know what I think before I start to write and when I’m writing poetry I’m just crawling into the dark. If something doesn’t surprise me I know it’s not a good poem. Poetry is very often problem solving for me, like there’s something I don’t understand and the only way I have of untangling it is by writing.

Ultimately, even Orthodoxy is bound to change. Every tradition remains alive by changing, even though every tradition likes to represent itself as permanent and changeless. Orthodoxy itself has changed over the centuries, and will go on changing as Orthodox women become more active as students of Talmud, which is already starting to happen both here and in Israel. And yes, I do believe with the theologian Judith Plaskow that a purely male God is nothing but an idol made in man's image, so if we want to avoid idol-worship, our understanding of God has to change.