“I use dreams, the subconscious, and the real objects, and I open up the body and use organs, and I sink them into words, and I ritualize them and fuse them into events. I guess poetry is like a festival. Everything can be transformed. The street becomes something else, the subways is something else, everything at a festival is disguised as something else. Everything changes: the look of a person changes, their intentions change, the attitudes are different, experiences are fiercer. Voices become other voices. So that’s what I do now in my poetry. I keep making connections. I try not to wade in the shallow water of shallowness and I try not to get stuck in the mud of art council standards and the spectators’ demand for messages. It’s called multiplication, division, and subtraction.”
– Jayne Cortez