Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Diane Wakoski
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: August 3
Essayist
Poet
Printmaker
University Teacher
Writer
Whittier
California
Think
Works
Shy
Thinking
Everybody
Poems
Like
Asks
Poem
People
Reading
Obviously
Tell
Critical
Doesn
Response
Work
Reader
Presenting
Good
Poetry
Criteria

More quotes by Diane Wakoski

Image
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
Image
Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.
Diane Wakoski
Image
American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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
Image
But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.
Diane Wakoski
Image
But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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.
Diane Wakoski
Image
Poetry is one of the essential structures of civilization - carrying myth, ritual, 'tales of the tribe' and the essence of language.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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.
Diane Wakoski
Image
I am not political as a person.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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
Image
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
Image
American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.
Diane Wakoski
Image
Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.
Diane Wakoski
Image
Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.
Diane Wakoski
Image
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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 bookshelves.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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
Image
There are rituals not structures for being a poet, drinking too much, taking too many drugs, being a lady chaser, having your nervous breakdown, being irresponsible about money.
Diane Wakoski