Quote

Poetry is one of the essential structures of civilization - carrying myth, ritual, 'tales of the tribe' and the essence of language.

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
Essentials
Tribe
Structure
Structures
Essence
Tribes
Civilization
Carrying
Poetry
Ritual
Language
Tales
Myth
Essential

More quotes by Diane Wakoski

Image
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
Image
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.
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
Image
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.
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
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
We are authors, all of us, concerned with beginning, with making, with sources and substance.
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
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
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
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
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
I am not political as a person.
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
The best young writers are convinced they need blurbs from famous writers before an editor will even read the first page of a manuscript. If this is true, then the editorial system that prevails today stinks. And let's start reforming it.
Diane Wakoski
Image
Poems come from incomplete knowledge.
Diane Wakoski
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
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