The only difference between a good writer who publishes a book and a good writer who doesn't is that the writer who publishes actually finished her book.

The only thing he could have done that he didn't do had he known the door wasn't locked, was to obtain a key.

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem, is finished enough to write down. I can hold several lines in my head for quite some time, but as soon as they are written down, the register clears, as it were, and I have to work with what is on the paper.

The poet called Miss Liberty's torch 'the lamp beside the golden door.' Well, that was the entrance to America, and it still is. And now you really know why we're here tonight. The glistening hope of that lamp is still ours. Every promise, every opportunity, is still golden in this land. And through that golden door our children can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America. Her heart is full; her torch is still golden, her future bright. She has arms big enough to comfort and strong enough to support, for the strength in her arms is the strength of her people. She will carry on in the '80s unafraid, unashamed, and unsurpassed. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is.

The point of all that is, they still decline to turn over the boy to his father. We could go to Miami and knock on the door and we could come out without the boy. That's unacceptable to us. The central issue is whether this boy is going to be restored to his father,