Quotes from 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.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

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

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

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

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 top that.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.