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
substance source concerned
We are authors, all of us, concerned with beginning, with making, with sources and substance.
writing thinking political
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.
political way current-events
But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.
thinking current-events use
But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.
eye creating add
What line breaks add to prose prosody is a connection between eye and ear which emphasizes the nature of the language by ... creating units of intent and emphasis, and by contouring the meloding pitch changes in the narrative-line.
feminist political care
Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care; that's what poetry is supposed to do.
dream flower arguing
I had been dreaming a complicated dream about helping poets revise their poems, so that each ending would open like a flower. I was not arguing, but engaged in a rousing discussion.
voice narrative shakespeares-sonnets
I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.
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.