A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you... where and when and how … - Adrienne Rich

("What are the obligations of poetry? Have they changed in your lifetime?") I don’t know that poetry itself has any universal or unique obligations. It’s a great ongoing human activity of making, over different times, under different circumstances. For a poet, in this time we call “ours,” in this whirlpool of disinformation and manufactured distraction? Not to fake it, not to practice a false innocence, not pull the shades down on what’s happening next door or across town. Not to settle for shallow formulas or lazy nihilism or stifling self-reference. Nothing “obliges” us to behave as honorable human beings except each others’ possible examples of honesty and generosity and courage and lucidity, suggesting a greater social compact.

at the time I started writing, that was already set up as a problem. If you were going to be writing a truly new poetry, could you use the old forms?

It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and plainful. ("When We Dead Awaken: Writing As Re-Vision")