Quotes by Diane Wakoski

About Diane Wakoski:

Diane Wakoski is 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Diane Wakoski

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

Diane Wakoski

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 ...

Diane Wakoski

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

Diane Wakoski

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.

Diane Wakoski

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.

Diane Wakoski

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 ...

Diane Wakoski

Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.

Diane Wakoski

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

Diane Wakoski

I am not political as a person.

Diane Wakoski

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.

Diane Wakoski

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.

Diane Wakoski

I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.

Diane Wakoski

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bo...

Diane Wakoski

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

Diane Wakoski

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

Diane Wakoski

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

Diane Wakoski

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

Diane Wakoski

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.

Diane Wakoski

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.

Diane Wakoski

Author Bio

  • NameDiane Wakoski
  • DescriptionAmerican poet
  • BornAugust 3, 1937
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship