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