Happiness Quote by Diane Wakoski

There is a sly double move in Wakoski's line: she begins with pleasure, slips in a confession of unease, then lands on a cultural diagnosis that sounds casual but cuts deep. "Perfectly happy" is not just a mood; it's a reversal of the old default where a room full of women meant your work was "niche", "domestic", or unserious. She refuses that shame reflex. And yet she admits to it: "I always think it's kind of odd" reads like an internalized checkpoint, the moment you notice your own audience has been gendered for you by the culture.

The key subtext sits in her blunt demographic claim: women "read and write poetry" more than men. On the surface it's an observation; underneath it's an indictment of what masculinity has been trained to avoid. Poetry demands intimacy with language, vulnerability, and the ability to dwell in ambiguity without rushing to utility. Those are traits our culture still codes as feminine, then quietly punishes in men. Wakoski isn't romanticizing women so much as pointing to who has been socially permitted to care.

Context matters: Wakoski comes out of a 20th-century American poetry scene where women were often the audience, the students, the workshop labor, while men disproportionately occupied the mythic role of "major poet". Her comment nudges at that imbalance without sermonizing. The oddness isn't that women show up. The oddness is that we still find it odd - as if the most dedicated readers in the room need an explanation.