Diane Wakoski (born 1937) is an American poet who is associated with the "deep image" poets, and to a lesser degree, the "confessional" and Beat poets of the 1960's.
Biography
Wakoski was born in Whittier, California and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she participated in Thom Gunn's poetry workshops. It was there that she first read many of the modernist poets who would influence her writing.Her early work was considered part of the "deep image" movement that also included Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Kelly, and Clayton Eshleman, among others. She also cites William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg as influences and her later work is more personal and conversational in the Williams mode.
She has published over forty books of poetry, including Emerald Ice : Selected Poems 1962-1987 (1988) and the four volumes of her The Archaeology of Movies and Books sequence, Argonaut Rose (1998), The Emerald City of Las Vegas (1995), Jason the Sailor (1993), and Medea the Sorceress (1991). A book of essays, Towards a New Poetry was published in 1980. She is best known for a series of poems collectively known as "The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems." She won the prestigious William Carlos Williams award for her book Emerald Ice.
Wakoski is married to the photographer Robert Turney, and teaches creative writing at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. She received considerable attention in the 1980's for controversial comments linking New Formalism with Reaganism.
External links
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Last updated on Thursday July 10, 2008 at 11:45:26 PDT (GMT -0700)
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