Diane Wakoski Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Art, Mean, Poetry Is

  45 Copy quote

• Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.

  Diane Wakoski

  Knowing Who You Are, Born, Process

  Diane Wakoski (1988). “Emerald Ice: Selected Poems, 1962-1987”, p.136, David R. Godine Publisher

  15 Copy quote

• Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

  Diane Wakoski

  Incomplete Knowledge, Poetry, Incomplete

  Diane Wakoski (1988). “Emerald Ice: Selected Poems, 1962-1987”, p.132, David R. Godine Publisher

  4 Copy quote

• We are authors, all of us, concerned with beginning, with making, with sources and substance.

  Diane Wakoski

  Substance, Source, Concerned

  Diane Wakoski (1973). “Smudging”

  4 Copy quote

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Language, Resilient, Stills

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• 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

  Thinking, People, Together

  4 Copy quote

• I write in the first person because I have always wanted to make my life more interesting than it was.

  Diane Wakoski

  Writing, Interesting, Firsts

  Diane Wakoski (1974). “Trilogy: Coins & Coffins: Discrepancies and Apparitions; The George Washington Poems”

  7 Copy quote

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Essence, Civilization, Essentials

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  War, People, Black

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Secret, Unlocking, Way

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Sex, Attitude, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Art, Together, Culture

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Political

  52 Copy quote

• 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.

  Diane Wakoski

  Thinking, Years, Interesting

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Different, Literature, Defining

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Numbers, Long

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, Answers, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, People, Trying

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• Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.

  Diane Wakoski

  Literature, Today, Language

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Passing On, Long, Literature

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• 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

  Drinking, Drug, Too Much

  Diane Wakoski (1988). “Emerald Ice: Selected Poems, 1962-1987”, p.162, David R. Godine Publisher

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Acceptance, Stuff, Good Work

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• 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

  Reading, Thinking, People

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

  Diane Wakoski

  Individuality, Literature, Painting

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• 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

  Race, Landscape, Sometimes

  7 Copy quote

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