SOURCE: "Creating a Personal Mythology," in Toward a New Poetry, The University of Michigan Press, 1980, pp. 106-19.

In this essay, originally written in 1974, Wakoski discusses her belief that "form is an extension of content" in poetry, and also explains her ideas about personal mythology and what subjects and processes inform her work.

Once again I am writing about the subject which seems so simple to me and yet which confuses so many readers of contemporary poetry. When I say "form is an extension of content," I truly mean to be so simple as to be almost tautological. I mean the poet first has something to say and then he finds a mode for saying it. That's so simple a proposition as to be of almost no meaning or help at all. But it can be enormously helpful in looking retrospectively at a poet's work. It means you have...