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


-Diane Wakoski

posted in poetry


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

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"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."

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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."

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"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."

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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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"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."

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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."

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"I write poetry in order to live more fully."

-Judith Rodriguez

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"He fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in a speech."

-John Colville

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"Poetry uses the hub of a torque converter for a jello mold."

-Diane Glancy

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"Poetry asks people to have values, form opinions, care about some other part of experience besides making money and being successful on the job."

-Toi Derricotte

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"For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers. For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ."

-Christopher Smart

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"I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion."

-Zona Gale

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