"Poetry is basically built out of what I think of as being a fairly political act at its core: "I'm not going to listen to how you described things. I'm going to look at them much more intensely and carefully than most people do, and certainly more intensely than our culture wants us to." The mission of the poem, of course, is to try to find the way to do that in the smallest amount of space possible."

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When I devoted myself to poetry - and poetry is a very serious medium - I don't think the people that knew me as an individual with that tongue-in-cheek kind of humor...well, it didn't always lend itself to my poetry. When you're writing poetry, it's like working with gold, you can't waste anything. You have to be very economical with each word you're going to select. But when you're writing fiction, you can just go on and on; you can be more playful. My editor's main task is to cut back, not ask for more.

— Ana Castillo