SOURCE: "Color is a Poet's Tool," in Poets' Perspectives: Reading, Writing, and Teaching Poetry, edited by Charles R. Duke and Sally A. Jacobson, Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1992, pp. 24–30.

In the following essay, Wakoski discusses her use of color as a primary organizing image in her work and uses her poem "The Pink Dress" as an example of her process.

In a poem called "What you should know to be a poet," Gary Snyder [in Regarding Wave] says that, basically, poets have to know everything, but he starts with this catalogue:

 all you can about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
names of stars, and the movements of the planets and the moon.

your own six senses, with a watchful and elegant mind.

at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot; 

As a young writer I agreed with...