SOURCE: "Diane Wakoski: Disentangling the Woman from the Moon," in Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth-Century Women, Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 98-113.

In the following essay, Lauter explores the developing relationship between women and nature in Wakoski's poetry, asserting that her association with nature, in particular the moon, evinces an appreciation of both nature and the feminine in life.

Perhaps Diane Wakoski's interest in the moon stems from its association with her given name. Whatever the reason, she transforms that coincidence into a remarkable exploration, over a ten-year span, of women's relationship to nature. In turn, by tracing the contours of her relationship with the moon through eight books of poems, I want to explore here some of the attitudes twentieth-century women might take toward nature. Specifically, I will argue that Wakoski effectively escapes two traps set by our cultural mythology: the radical separation of...