Diane Wakoski

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

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

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.

But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible.

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.