When I write about a particular experience or event or feeling, I try to hone in on the root at which all people can say that they have felt the same way. This root of how we feel about things, the root of what we experience, never changes no matter who we are or where we live. The idea of love is never changed. The idea of despair is universal. The causes of these are different, but the root of these is the same in all people, in all parts of the world.
Language is the bridge between black and white, between red and brown, between yellow and brown.
You suspend who you are for a moment and participate in the energy that is universal. When you are done with the poem, you are who you are culturally because that is what you have gone through and that is how you have lived. But the product of that is universally human. Everything is a relationship. Everything is relational.