Diane Wakoski Quotes

Diane Wakoski is an American poet known for her prolific body of work and her exploration of themes like love, desire, and the human experience. Her poetry has been celebrated for its raw emotion and innovative use of language, earning her a devoted readership.

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.

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.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it i... -Diane Wakoski

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

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This quote suggests that even when faced with challenging circumstances or societal pressures, poetry has the ability to persist and endure, adapting or finding alternative means of expression to remain alive.

PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

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.

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.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.