Emerald Ice

In 1988 at the age of fifty Diana Wakoski selected the poems in Emerald Ice from her first sixteen books of poetry. Here returned to print at last are all the famous (and infamous) lyrics series and narratives that established Wakoski as a mythologizer of sex and self a fierce free-verse imagist and one of the most important and controversial poets to come out of California in the 1960s.About these poems Wakoski writes: "My themes are loss justice truth transformation the duality of the world the possibilities of magic and the creation of beauty out of ugliness. My language is dramatic oral and as American as I can make it. I am impatient with stupidity bureaucracy and organizations. Poetry for me is the supreme art of the individual using language to show how special different and wonderful his perceptions are. With verve and finesse. With discursive precision. And with utter contempt for pettiness of imagination or spirit."Emerald Ice is a contemporary classic the essential poems of