My poems come to me in images, like film. I can see it very clearly and then this overwhelming urge to write out best what I just saw comes over me…

The overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.

It gets worse and worse. I love it, but I have no life. People grab me and kiss me. I like that, but it can be overwhelming.

I felt like I wasn’t going to make it,” she said. “When I thought about my life in front of me, how I’m going to rise up to anything … it was so overwhelming.”

I have visited Graceland and you could see the man was overwhelmingly honest. He never professed any taste other than his own, that is, country boy made good. He never pretended to be anyone else.

I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin's prose. It liberated me as a writer. These poems overwhelm without competing with his prose, and I am grateful to have this collection.