"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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Wakoski is making a deliberately unfashionable claim: that poetic greatness isn’t a timeless crown passed around to whoever feels most “relevant,” but a peak achievement inside a particular historical moment. By defining great poetry as “the most interesting and complex use of the poet’s language at that point in history,” she shifts the argument away from taste and toward craft under pressure. Language isn’t neutral here; it’s a living system with constraints, trends, and limits. The best poets don’t merely express themselves, they stress-test what their era’s English can do.
That’s why Yeats matters in her telling. He becomes proof that an earlier stage of the language can still outmaneuver the present. The kicker is the heretical pleasure in it: “even more exciting” to admit that a poet “almost 100 years old” might be untoppable. It’s a quiet rebuke to the cultural reflex that newer equals better, or that innovation automatically means improvement. Wakoski is also protecting poetry from the marketplace logic of constant upgrades.
The subtext is both admiration and anxiety. If Yeats set a ceiling, what does a contemporary poet do: chase novelty, or deepen technique? Wakoski’s answer implies a bracing standard. “Top that” isn’t about hype or visibility; it’s about whether anyone can make the language do more than Yeats already made it do. Coming from a working poet, the line reads less like canon worship than like a dare: stop pretending the past is safely surpassed, and write as if the bar is still painfully high.
That’s why Yeats matters in her telling. He becomes proof that an earlier stage of the language can still outmaneuver the present. The kicker is the heretical pleasure in it: “even more exciting” to admit that a poet “almost 100 years old” might be untoppable. It’s a quiet rebuke to the cultural reflex that newer equals better, or that innovation automatically means improvement. Wakoski is also protecting poetry from the marketplace logic of constant upgrades.
The subtext is both admiration and anxiety. If Yeats set a ceiling, what does a contemporary poet do: chase novelty, or deepen technique? Wakoski’s answer implies a bracing standard. “Top that” isn’t about hype or visibility; it’s about whether anyone can make the language do more than Yeats already made it do. Coming from a working poet, the line reads less like canon worship than like a dare: stop pretending the past is safely surpassed, and write as if the bar is still painfully high.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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