"PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy"
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Wakoski is taking a scalpel to the way institutions launder taste through virtue. “PC stuff” isn’t just a political gripe here; it’s shorthand for a cultural sorting mechanism that rewards the visible performance of the “right” values over the harder-to-measure force of a poem that actually does something on the page. The line is built on a tight, almost prosecutorial contrast: “good work” versus “bogus poetry.” She’s not denying the worthiness of the values being celebrated; she’s accusing the celebration itself of becoming a substitute for craft.
The subtext is anxiety about gatekeeping dressed as moral progress. “General acceptance” is the tell: she’s describing a lowered bar that spreads outward, where consensus forms around what feels correct rather than what reads as alive, strange, or formally convincing. That’s a poet’s fear, not a pundit’s: the dread that the literary ecosystem will privilege statement over surprise, correctness over risk, applause over attention.
Context matters. Wakoski came up in a postwar American poetry world that lionized voice, toughness, and aesthetic permission (confessional, Beat-adjacent, anti-establishment). By the late 20th century, poetry’s public life increasingly ran through universities, grants, prizes, and curated syllabi - settings where moral legibility can become a kind of currency. Her jab lands because it’s double-edged: she concedes the values may be “quite worthy,” then suggests worthiness is exactly what makes the counterfeit so easy to pass. The sentence itself performs her standard: plainspoken, unsentimental, allergic to sanctimony.
The subtext is anxiety about gatekeeping dressed as moral progress. “General acceptance” is the tell: she’s describing a lowered bar that spreads outward, where consensus forms around what feels correct rather than what reads as alive, strange, or formally convincing. That’s a poet’s fear, not a pundit’s: the dread that the literary ecosystem will privilege statement over surprise, correctness over risk, applause over attention.
Context matters. Wakoski came up in a postwar American poetry world that lionized voice, toughness, and aesthetic permission (confessional, Beat-adjacent, anti-establishment). By the late 20th century, poetry’s public life increasingly ran through universities, grants, prizes, and curated syllabi - settings where moral legibility can become a kind of currency. Her jab lands because it’s double-edged: she concedes the values may be “quite worthy,” then suggests worthiness is exactly what makes the counterfeit so easy to pass. The sentence itself performs her standard: plainspoken, unsentimental, allergic to sanctimony.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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