Using Imagination to Create New Roles: Diane Wakoski's Poetry (Critical Essay‪)‬

In 2001, as my "Women In America" class drew to a close, my freshman students had a complaint so compelling that they risked offending me just before I calculated final grades. They announced that the women's movement seemed a failure to them because they saw no successful women whom they would choose to emulate. The stars of the entertainment industry, like Madonna or Whitney Houston, tended to have troubled personal lives, while the "safer" role models like Janet Reno and Madeleine Albright seemed desexed. They looked around and saw no woman whose life suggested that they could enjoy distinguished careers without sacrificing all hope of developing a rich personal lives. I suspect that if the poet Diane Wakoski had heard their comments, she would urge the students to see this deficit as an opportunity to use their hearts and minds to develop and live out new roles that would allow women to enjoy both success and personal happiness. Wakoski's poetry asserts again and again that imagination can help solve the difficulties that repeatedly haunt women.