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
reading thinking people
I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why.
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.
thinking people trying
Other people have noticed more of an evolution than I have and so I'll try to tell you where I'm coming from and also relate it to what I think other people perceive.
thinking years interesting
I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that.
thinking people together
I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior.
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.
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.
wish language british
I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.
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.