Life & Wisdom Quote by Diane Wakoski

Wakoski frames poetry less as self-expression than as custody: a tradition you inherit, steward, and hand off. The power of the line is how it refuses the contemporary myth of the solitary genius. Instead, she places herself in a “long line” and makes that lineage the point. It’s an argument for continuity at a moment when literary culture often rewards novelty, branding, and the illusion of reinvention. By calling herself “another one,” she undercuts ego without erasing agency; she’s not diminishing her work so much as insisting it gains force when read as part of an ongoing conversation.

The intent is quietly institutional, but not bureaucratic: she’s describing poetry as an intergenerational infrastructure. “Passing on” suggests apprenticeship, editorship, teaching, reading series, small presses, correspondence - the unglamorous labor that keeps art forms alive. The subtext is that poems don’t survive on inspiration alone; they survive on communities that remember, argue, and make room.

Wakoski’s phrasing also carries a democratic edge. She doesn’t say she’s passing it to “the best” poets, but to “younger, or newer” ones - a widening of the gate. “Newer” matters: it makes space for late bloomers, outsiders, people entering through nontraditional routes. In the context of a woman poet coming up in mid-20th-century American letters, the statement reads as both gratitude and corrective: tradition is real, but it’s not fixed. Each “another one” subtly changes what the line can include.