Toward a New Poetry

Book excerpt: This volume presents Diane Wakoski's innovative ideas about contemporary poetry, elsewhere embodied in her own poetic art. The author's critical essays, poem-lectures, and columns from the American Poetry Review are collected for the first time, together with several interviews in which she answers her readers' questions. This gathering of Diane Wakoski's prose writing assembles a unique self-portrait of the poet. Poets on Poetry collects critical books by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation. -- From back cover.