A biography of diane / A landscape of the moon
Diane Wakoski was born on August 3, 1937 in Whittier, California. Though we do not know know much about her childhood or life as young adult, this is reflected through the poetry written in the The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems. In an interview with Claire Healy from Contemporary Literature, Wakoski states that she began writing poetry at the age of seven. The poems are deeply personal and confessional, often speaking about her relationship to her mother, her estranged father and the relationships she maintains with several men over the years. Though she has a strong feminine lens, Wakoski makes it clear that this is not the only perspective she is working with in her poems. She says in an interview with Larry Smith of the Chicago review:
For years I’ve been using womanhood as a metaphor for being a poet; to me there is a great similarity. When I talk about femaleness, or the woman’s role in the world, what I’m actually talking about is the poet: the anima as opposed to the animus, the feeling proposition in the thinking world, the respondent to love rather than the respondent to strategy.
The poems reflect these views, often giving us her personal insight, but pushing further to be understood on a human level, on an emotional playing field. She takes the personal subjects of love and loss and makes them reachable, comprehensible and relatable.
Wakoski did her undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. It was during this time that she participated in poetry workshops with Thom Gunn and where she encountered many of the modernist poets that would influence her early writing style. In her interview with Claire Healy, she states:
I wrote many sonnets and began taking writing courses in the fifties at Berkeley. I was encouraged with Tom Parkinson and Josephine Miles, and admired Robinson Jeffers and T.S. Eliot. I think I was fortunate to be in the college in the late fifties, at the time of the San Francisco poetry renaissance.
Shortly after her graduation, she moved to New York with La Monte Young to start her poetry career— her first collection Coins & Coffins was published by Hawk’s Well Press in 1962 (Garbutt). She resided in New York until 1973, having published four more collections during that time including The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems. After leaving New York, Wakoski settled down in Michigan with her husband photographer Robert Turney. She continued to write poetry and won the William Carlos William Prize from the Poetry Society of America in 1989. Currently, Wakoski holds the position of University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Wakoski has written more than twenty collections of poetry and continues to write and teach today from her Michigan home.
For years I’ve been using womanhood as a metaphor for being a poet; to me there is a great similarity. When I talk about femaleness, or the woman’s role in the world, what I’m actually talking about is the poet: the anima as opposed to the animus, the feeling proposition in the thinking world, the respondent to love rather than the respondent to strategy.
The poems reflect these views, often giving us her personal insight, but pushing further to be understood on a human level, on an emotional playing field. She takes the personal subjects of love and loss and makes them reachable, comprehensible and relatable.
Wakoski did her undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. It was during this time that she participated in poetry workshops with Thom Gunn and where she encountered many of the modernist poets that would influence her early writing style. In her interview with Claire Healy, she states:
I wrote many sonnets and began taking writing courses in the fifties at Berkeley. I was encouraged with Tom Parkinson and Josephine Miles, and admired Robinson Jeffers and T.S. Eliot. I think I was fortunate to be in the college in the late fifties, at the time of the San Francisco poetry renaissance.
Shortly after her graduation, she moved to New York with La Monte Young to start her poetry career— her first collection Coins & Coffins was published by Hawk’s Well Press in 1962 (Garbutt). She resided in New York until 1973, having published four more collections during that time including The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems. After leaving New York, Wakoski settled down in Michigan with her husband photographer Robert Turney. She continued to write poetry and won the William Carlos William Prize from the Poetry Society of America in 1989. Currently, Wakoski holds the position of University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Wakoski has written more than twenty collections of poetry and continues to write and teach today from her Michigan home.