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 1960’s.

She received considerable attention in the 1980’s for controversial comments linking New Formalism with Reaganism.

Date of birth:
3rd August, 1937
"High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this."
― Diane Wakoski
Topic(s): Poetry
"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
Topic(s): Poetry
"Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground."
― Diane Wakoski
Topic(s): Poetry
"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
Topic(s): Poetry
"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."
― Diane Wakoski
Topic(s): Poetry
"But I don’t think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events."
― Diane Wakoski
Topic(s): Poetry
"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
Topic(s): Attitude
"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
Topic(s): Poetry
"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."
― Diane Wakoski
Topic(s): Poetry
"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
Topic(s): Poetry

© 2023 BQOTD. All rights reserved.