| 1966 | Discrepancies and Apparitions. After an initial small press collection, Coins and Coffins (1961), Wakoski's first major volume features her characteristic "personal narrative" style of vividly delivered intimate moments of recognition. Born in California, Wakoski has since 1967 been a teacher at Michigan State University. |
| 1967 | The George Washington Poems. Wakoski treats Washington as a central symbol of the male mystique in a series of witty, acerbic verses addressed to the founding father from a variety of female perspectives. |
| 1968 | Greed. Wakoski publishes the first two parts of an evolving sequence, with a subject that the poet defines as the failure to choose, the obstinate desire to "have it all." Wakoski writes in an immediate, personal, highly idiosyncratic style to meditate on what critic Alicia Ostriker calls the "All or Nothing syndrome in female romantic fantasies." The Collected Greed would be published in 1984. |
| 1971 | The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems. This collection confirms Wakoski's reputation as one of the finest of contemporary confessional poets. She mounts a ferocious but also comic attack on all the men who have betrayed her, while excoriating a world where women take second place to men. |
| 1975 | Virtuoso Literature for Two and Four Hands. The poet describes in a preface her intention to explore in this collection "the images of fantasy and my past. My keyboard now is the typewriter." Poems include "Winter Sequence" and "Driving Gloves." |
| 1977 | Waiting for the King of Spain. The collection contains "To the Thin and Elegant Woman Who Resides Inside of Alix Nelson", one of her most characteristic and accomplished poems. The Man Who Shook Hands (1978) would follow; it includes an essay on music and poetry, which Wakoski has said provide a key "to where my philosophies and meditations are leading me." |
The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
