Wakoski was born in Whittier, California and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she participated in Thom Gunn's poetry workshops. It was there that she first read many of the modernist poets who would influence her writing.

Her early work was considered part of the deep image movement that also included Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Kelly, and Clayton Eshleman, among others. She also cites William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg as influences and her later work is more personal and conversational in the Williams mode.

She is best known for a series of poems collectively known as "The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems."

She received considerable attention in the 1980s for controversial comments linking New Formalism with Reaganism.

Wakoski is married to the photographer Robert Turney, and teaches creative writing at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.

Poetry

• "Red Bandana", echonyc
• The Archaeology of Movies and Books sequence:

Anthology

Essays