DIANE DI PRIMA R.I.P.

 
Diane di Prima was one of the first major influences on my poetry and other writing and life. I discovered her in the 1950s and not only had a crush on her and her writing but identified with and was inspired by her outer borough flight to Manhattan downtown and the bohemian lifestyle. She was a revolutionary, breaking all the molds and becoming a beacon of self discovery and expression. The only female who garnered attention and acclaim during the height of the Beat scene's first wave of fame, and the most independent woman I ever knew.

I was a dj (in the old radio show sense of the term) in 1960 when I was 18 and got fired for reciting a poem from her book DINNERS AND NIGHTMARES. Here's a sonnet I wrote about that:

I learn how to back scratch a record to cue it up

to the next song, then hold it steady while the

song on the other turntable winds down, and

with my free hand leaf through a binder for the

ad copy to read in between. The station higher

ups want me to talk more, but my model is

Symphony Sid, whose theme song was sung by

King Pleasure: Jumping with my boy Sid in the

city…make everything go real crazy over Jersey.

Now and then I whisper a poem on air mystifying

my bosses or pissing them off. Like one by ex-con

Ray Bremser about the Jersey turnpike: varoom.

The one that gets me fired was Diane di Prima’s

NIGHTMARE 6: Get your cut throat off my knife. 

We became friends in the early 1970s, and bonded over being activists for feminist and gay rights which she had been one of the pioneers in, but I suck at keeping connected so only saw her a few times. After one of my Black Sparrow books came out at the beginning of this century I got a postcard from her saying she'd picked up a copy and was so happy to hear my voice again (I'm paraphrasing from memory since the card is in my archives at NYU). It filled my heart.

I recommend her writing to young people all the time. DINNERS AND NIGHTMARES is the most authentic expression of the 1950s Beat scene (for my taste) and REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS captures the spirit of the 1960s better than anything, as LOBA does the same for the second wave of feminism that occurred in the 1970s. And her RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN: The New York Years is in my top five of all-time favorite memoirs.

Despite not staying in touch good enough, I felt her presence in the world every day and already miss her. She was loved and admired and appreciated by a lot of us and I'm sure she knew that (there's tons of wonderful stuff on her on the Internet, including I think a documentary that shows that). We still love you, Diane.