Deciphering Diane di Prima

Thursday's Lunch Poems reading series featured the beatnik poet Diane di Prima. While I've had the fortune to read her work in anthologies and journals and various and sundry places, hearing her stories in person was a wonderfully refreshing and enlightening experience.

I've always had difficulty unlocking the codes to her poetry as seen on the page; never could understand all those unpunctuated caesuras and empty spaces, and especially those wild, grand questions populating her poems. In fact, her poems WERE wild questions for which I had no answer. Often, the spaciousness of her poems confounded me, making me wonder why she could say such things and be taken seriously, while my statements and questions fell flat like deflated balloons. What quality did di Prima's poetic voice possess that allowed and invited people to define her poetry as pushing against the edges? What made her writing move beyond the margins and into the lives of people? What makes the line "the vortex of creation is the vortex of destruction" acceptable because she said it, whereas if I wrote that same idea 4 years ago in grad school, it would be scoffed at by the likes of Timothy Liu?

Listening to her stories, I grow to understand that the poems carry the weight of the social contexts in which these poems were written, are being written. In the days of civil rights movements, in the days of defining and redefining what was "normative", in the days of questioning -- shaking up, inverting, challenging -- the status quo, she was willing to drive around on flatbed trucks, yelling out these words:

You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locked to your past
Free yourself
Free yourself

(-from Revolutionary Letter #49)

Seeing her poetry on the page wasn't enough to understand that what she was channeling was poetry of political protest, and so much more. Without the socio-economic contexts of these poems, I couldn't appreciate them.

Admittedly, if my poetry students were to write these lines now, I'd have serious doubts about whether I could fully explain to them that they are writing in a vacuum, a void, because how could they be immersed so fully as di Prima was during those times? And perhaps I would be wrong, because look at where our government has taken us now... and here I begin to think that I'm treading on dangerous ground... nevertheless, I have to say that I can't digest this type of blanket rally cries.

She writes: "the only war that matters is the war against / the imagination"

And, "There is no way you can avoid taking sides / There is no way you can not have a poetics"

How are these lines poetry? They sound more like instructions from Richard Hugo or Louis Gluck. I don't have difficulty believing in the efficacy of these words to inspire others to take a stand on a social justice or civil rights issue. In fact, we could easily be persuaded to take up the cross of our civic duties, demand our rights as free Americans, and expect our voices to be heard while driving through town blaring our words through megaphones. That was the beauty of poetry, and is the beauty of poetry -- to affect change. But, I can't imagine myself writing with that voice and believing in it myself. It's hard for me to see these as lines of poetry if I pull them out of the contexts and out of the larger whole. Alone, they are not really poetry. That is why I appreciate hearing di Prima in person. Her reading added cadence and rhythm and rhyme and meaning -- and passion -- to what was lacking on the page.

Revolutionary Letter #90 goes like this:

ANCIENT HISTORY

The women are lying down
in front of the bulldozers
sent to destroy
the last of the olive groves.

The words carry much more weight because of the actions that inspired them, called them, to come forth. The physicality of lying down on the hard ground in the face of the bulldozers' great claws necessitates these simple four lines. The simplicity of these words -- very matter of fact as if it was reported on the telly by some reporter -- is offset by the action itself, not just imagined acts. The simplicity of the lines is balanced, too, by the motivation of these women who are lying down -- not in resignation but with determination to prolong the life of trees, to fight against something immovable and impenetrable and destructive. The simplicity is also balanced by the motivation of the poet who wishes to record these things as ancient history -- but not really -- so that future generations will witness these acts and then act accordingly.

I get it now, but not at the time that I glanced at four simple lines with nary an explanation.

I buy a copy of Revolutionary Letters (published and distributed by Last Gasp of San Francisco, www.lastgasp.com) and see the quote from Michelle Tea:

"Diane di Prima is the original outlaw poet; she wrote herself a wild, authentic life without regard for the rules during an era when being such a female creature was truly transgressive. Her writing is crucial as history; as literature it is enduring and bewitching."

It is no doubt, for me, a challenge. It is a challenge to understand and appreciate how during her time (and many di Prima followers will argue with me whether or not that time has passed -- perhaps it is most relevant now considering our current socio-political-economic contexts) her writings were "transgressive" and wild. It is also a challenge to bring forth for myself my own definitive, groundbreaking, heartwrenching, wildly aching, madly thrashing, imaginatively explosive, in your face kind of poetry that stops people from breathing and forces them to feel the essence of life. A challenge to be my own kind of "outlaw poet."

I may not love it, but I am certainly called by it. I may not enjoy it, but I am inspired by it. I may not perform these poems or similar ones on the steps of City Hall, but I just might one day find my own flatbed truck from which I will spiel out "outlaw" poetry...