Diane Wakoski
Diane Wakoski
Diane Wakoskiis an American poet. Wakoski is primarily associated with the deep image poets, as well as the confessional and Beat poets of the 1960s. She received considerable attention in the 1980s for controversial comments linking New Formalism with Reaganism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth3 August 1937
CountryUnited States of America
political persons
I am not political as a person.
women writing thinking
I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry.
women thinking problem
My poems are almost all written as Diane. I don't have any problems with that, and if other women choose to identify with this, I think that's terrific.
sex attitude thinking
I think one of the things that language poets are very involved with is getting away from conventional ideas of beauty, because those ideas contain a certain attitude toward women, certain attitudes toward sex, certain attitudes toward race, etc.
body celebrate-life poet
American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.
war people black
So, I've never been politically correct, even before that term was available to us, and I have really identified with other people who don't want to be read as just a black poet, or just a woman poet, or just someone who represents a cause, an anti-Vietnam war poet.
different literature defining
American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.
born process involvement
Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.
writing interesting firsts
I write in the first person because I have always wanted to make my life more interesting than it was.
art mean poetry-is
Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.
break defining oneself poetry
American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.
reading answers literature
From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.
today language sometimes
Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.
language resilient stills
Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.