In 1988, at the age of fifty, Diana Wakoski selected the poems in Emerald Ice/b> from her first sixteen books of poetry. Here are all the 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 in the United States today" "(Contemporary Poets).
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. Arid with utter contempt for pettiness of imagination or spirit." Emerald Ice is a contemporary classic, the essential poems of a uniquely American female sensibility.