SOURCE: "Plenitude and Dearth," in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring-Summer 1973, pp. 51-9.

In this excerpt from a larger article comparing four women poets, Brown notes the strength of Wakoski 's poetic persona and her skillful blending of the commonplace with more fantastic and imaginative elements. The critic finds that Wakoski's work in Smudging suffers from other qualities, however, including wordiness, awkward prose, and a frequently "nagging" tone.

Twice in the last year I've encountered poems by college girls that refer in obvious fascination to Diane Wakoski's face; one, naming its source, referred readers to her poem, "I Have Had to Learn to Live With My Face." Referred to the poet, that is, through her poem, curious about what she "really" looks like, uncertain whether this admission of homeliness ("no one could love it… a desert mountain, a killer…") is an artful exaggeration or a hard, mean...