We are moving so quickly in today's world that our experiences are blurred. We need to slow down so that our senses will awaken and our hearts will o… - Linda Hogan

The anthropologists and those studying tribal peoples too often write their own interpretation of what is said because they are unable to see larger, to think beyond their own thinking enough to come to what is really spoken, meant, and known about the world. For indigenous peoples, each place has its own intelligence, its own stories.

Most of us think of the earth as a living being and that we must live upon it with care and love and respect. The idea of subjugating the earth is the product of another mind. Even environmentalists, she maintains, are of another mind because they are not concerned so much with the sacred as with the idea of stewardship.

I used to tell students that whatever is inside the psyche will come to the fore in poetry and writing and not to think too much about wanting to say something, about wanting a theme. It is already there. Given the chance, words will come with their own will. A poem knows what it wants to do even without the mind of the writer intervening. Writers can’t create it on their own behalf and make it right. It is more like putting together a basket. The shape happens as the maker weaves...That is my key way of knowing; It Comes to Me.