Alicia Ostriker: “When I was young I used to plan my poems. I knew what I wanted them to ‘say.’ Now they are like crawling into the dark. I write in order to understand what confuses/troubles/baffles me. I write to clarify what I’m feeling. I write to include the contradictions, wrestle the obsessions, because I don’t know who I am when I’m not writing. For example: what does it mean to be a third-generation American Jewish woman poet? This poem struggles with the ‘American’ part.”
Corrina Bain: “When I was a kid, listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I thought that art was going to give meaning to my pain. Then I got it stuck in reverse for several years, making pain to weight my art. So I’m trying now to un-afflict myself. Or maybe to bring the reader down with me, depending on the day.” (website)