Life & Wisdom Quote by Diane Wakoski

Poetry, for Wakoski, isn’t decorative language; it’s a social technology that smuggles intimacy into public life. The key move is her paradox: a “common thing” that’s “outside of themselves,” yet recognized “from the interior.” That contradiction is the engine. A poem is an object you can point to together, a shared artifact that keeps people from collapsing into pure confession or pure ideology. At the same time, it only activates when a reader supplies private voltage - memory, shame, desire, grief. Wakoski describes community not as consensus but as synchronized inwardness.

The intent reads partly defensive, partly generous. Poets are perpetually asked what poems are “for,” especially in an America that treats usefulness as the highest aesthetic. Wakoski answers without surrendering to utility: poetry’s value isn’t instruction; it’s identification. She’s also quietly arguing against the caricature of poetry as elitist or hermetic. The “come together” phrase is almost civic: poems can be meeting places for people who don’t share biography, class, or politics, because the meeting point is crafted language - not personal access.

Context matters: Wakoski emerged in postwar, post-confessional currents where the “I” became combustible. Her line splits the difference. Yes, poetry starts in the interior, but it must be made external, shaped, offered. The subtext is a challenge to both sides: to readers, risk feeling something real; to poets, make a container sturdy enough that strangers can climb inside.