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" 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. "

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" 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

Choose

Women

Almost

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I am not political as a person. "

Diane Wakoski

Political

I Am

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

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

" 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. "

" I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them. "

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

Diane Wakoski

Always

Poetry

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

" American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did. "

" 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. "

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "