She is the author of eighteen books of poetry, plays, prose and essays. Her work is characterized by an interest in extreme emotional states, depictions of human behavior in animalistic terms, outrage at social injustice, and an artfully disjointed style in which dashes interrupt unfinished thoughts. Recent books include Defoe (1995), a novel, and two collections of writing, Objects in the Terrifying Tense (1993) and Green and Black / Selected Writings (1996). Books of poems include, The Woman Who Could Read the Minds of Dogs (1976), Considering how exaggerated music is (1982), way (1988), which received the American Book Award, and crowd and not evening light (1992). A new volume of poetry, New Time, and a collection of essays, The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence, are due to be released in the spring of 1999.