Diane Di prima 1934-2020

Diane di Prima, the most prominent woman among the male-dominated Beat poet=
s, who after being immersed in the bohemian swirl of Greenwich Village in t=
he 1950s moved to the West Coast and continued to publish prolifically in a=
 wide range of forms, died on Sunday in San Francisco. She was 86.

Her husband, Sheppard Powell, confirmed her death, at a hospital. She had b=
een living at an elder care home since 2017 because of various health probl=
ems, having moved there from the couple=E2=80=99s home in the city=E2=80=99=
s Excelsior district.

Ms. di Prima was initially known as one of the Beats; she published her fir=
st poetry volume, =E2=80=9CThis Kind of Bird Flies Backward,=E2=80=9D in 19=
58, two years after Allen Ginsberg=E2=80=99s celebrated =E2=80=9CHowl and O=
ther Poems=E2=80=9D appeared. It cost 95 cents. Lawrence Ferlinghetti provi=
ded the introduction.

=E2=80=9CHere=E2=80=99s a sound not heard before,=E2=80=9D he wrote. =E2=80=
=9CThe voice is gritty. The eye turns. The heart is in it.=E2=80=9D

Advertisement
Continue reading the main story

But her Beat period was only the beginning; over her long career Ms. di Pri=
ma published some 50 poetry books and chapbooks.

=E2=80=9CI don=E2=80=99t mind that people use the Beat label,=E2=80=9D she =
told The Chicago Tribune in 2000. =E2=80=9CIt=E2=80=99s just that it=E2=80=
=99s very much of one time, a long time ago. A lot of people kept being Bea=
t writers in terms of the language they used. I can do it sometimes but not=
 most of the time.=E2=80=9D
Image
Ms. di Prima wrote about her romantic and literary explorations in “R=
ecollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years,” published in=
 2001.
Ms. di Prima wrote about her romantic and literary explorations in =E2=80=
=9CRecollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years,=E2=80=9D publis=
hed in 2001.

Ms. di Prima lived a life that was light years away from the suburban-house=
wife world that has become the prevailing image of the 1950s =E2=80=94 taki=
ng an assortment of lovers, doing some nude modeling to make money, courtin=
g arrest with the publications she and her circle printed. She wrote about =
her romantic and literary explorations in =E2=80=9CRecollections of My Life=
 as a Woman: The New York Years=E2=80=9D (2001).

She had earlier written the startlingly erotic =E2=80=9CMemoirs of a Beatni=
k=E2=80=9D (1969), which had autobiographical elements but was more novel t=
han memoir. A French publisher, Maurice Girodias, had contracted her to wri=
te an erotic take on the Beat era, and, as the Tribune article noted, =E2=
=80=9CGirodias kept sending back the manuscript, scrawled with notations fo=
r =E2=80=98more sex,=E2=80=99 and di Prima obliged with fictionalized passa=
ges of erotic acrobatics.=E2=80=9D Yet the book attained cult status as a r=
are feminist window onto a period when men got most of the attention and se=
xism was much in evidence.

Advertisement
Continue reading the main story

Ammiel Alcalay, one of her literary executors, said the free-spirit element=
s of Ms. di Prima=E2=80=99s life belied the serious scholarship underpinnin=
g her poetry.

=E2=80=9CBecause of the life she lived and the iconic image of the =E2=80=
=98Beat woman,=E2=80=99 the extraordinary range of sources and knowledge th=
at went into di Prima=E2=80=99s writing and thought has hardly been explore=
d,=E2=80=9D Mr. Alcalay, a professor at Queens College and the Graduate Cen=
ter, said by email. =E2=80=9CFrom discovering Keats as a teenager to visiti=
ng Ezra Pound during his incarceration at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Diane wa=
s always connected to both her elders and her most vital contemporaries.=E2=
=80=9D Mr. Alcalay has published her work as part of a series of books call=
ed Lost & Found.

Among Ms. di Prima=E2=80=99s most ambitious works was a mythologically and =
spiritually themed series of poems, under the title =E2=80=9CLoba,=E2=80=9D=
 that she added to and revised for decades; in 1998 Penguin published a col=
lected version more than 300 pages long.

David Levi Strauss, a writer and teacher who was part of Ms. di Prima=E2=80=
=99s circle in San Francisco in the 1980s, studying with her in the Poetics=
 Program at New College of California, recalled how seriously she took the =
craft.
The Year=E2=80=99s Obituaries
Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman,=
 Kirk Douglas, Little Richard, Mary Higgins Clark and many others who died =
this year.
Notable Deaths 2020

=E2=80=9CShe taught something called Hidden Religion, which was about spiri=
tual and political heresies,=E2=80=9D he said by email. =E2=80=9CThe intent=
ion of the whole course of study in the Poetics Program was to give student=
s an intellectual base to build on, and sources that they could draw on for=
 the rest of their lives as writers.=E2=80=9D
Image
Ms. di Prima’s startlingly erotic 1969 memoir offered a rare feminist=
 window onto a period when men got most of the attention and sexism was muc=
h in evidence.
Ms. di Prima=E2=80=99s startlingly erotic 1969 memoir offered a rare femini=
st window onto a period when men got most of the attention and sexism was m=
uch in evidence.

Ms. di Prima was named poet laureate of San Francisco in 2009. At an event =
commemorating the appointment, she read a new poem called =E2=80=9CFirst Dr=
aft: Poet Laureate Oath of Office.=E2=80=9D It ends this way:

    my vow is:
    to remind us all
    to celebrate
    there is no time
    too desperate
    no season
    that is not
    a Season of Song

Diane Rose DiPrima (her brother Frank DiPrima said she adjusted the family =
name to lowercase the =E2=80=9Cdi=E2=80=9D and put a space after it because=
 she thought that that was truer to her Italian ancestors) was born on Aug.=
 6, 1934, in Brooklyn. Her father, Francis, was a lawyer, and her mother, E=
mma, was a teacher.

Advertisement
Continue reading the main story

Ms. di Prima often spoke of the influence of her maternal grandfather, Dome=
nico Mallozzi, a tailor and anarchist who had immigrated from Italy. He was=
, she wrote in her 2001 memoir, =E2=80=9Cregarded somewhat as a family trea=
sure: a powerful and erratic kind of lightning generator, a kind of Tesla e=
xperiment, we for some reason kept in the house.=E2=80=9D

Her collection =E2=80=9CRevolutionary Letters=E2=80=9D (she wrote a series =
of poems under that title) included a poem about him, =E2=80=9CApril Fool B=
irthday Poem for Grandpa,=E2=80=9D which begins this way:

    Today is your
    birthday and I have tried
    writing these things before,
    but now
    in the gathering madness, I want to
    thank you
    for telling me what to expect
    for pulling
    no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor

Yet, she wrote, her maternal grandmother, Antoinette, and the other women i=
n the household in which she grew up taught her the practicalities of survi=
val. =E2=80=9CIt was at my grandmother=E2=80=99s side,=E2=80=9D she wrote, =
=E2=80=9Cin that scrubbed and waxed apartment, that I received my first com=
munications about the specialness and the relative uselessness of men.=E2=
=80=9D

Her mother imparted an early appreciation of poetry. =E2=80=9COur household=
 was extremely verbal,=E2=80=9D Frank DiPrima said in a phone interview. =
=E2=80=9CMy mother would speak verse every day of my life.=E2=80=9D

Ms. di Prima attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan and stayed th=
ree semesters at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania before leaving to join =
the Greenwich Village scene. In 1961 she was a founder of the New York Poet=
s Theater, which staged works by poets and avant-garde writers. She produce=
d a literary newsletter, The Floating Bear =E2=80=94 at first with her love=
r, the poet LeRoi Jones, who later adopted the name Amiri Baraka, and then =
on her own.

But she grew disillusioned with New York and in 1968 made her way to San Fr=
ancisco to work with the Diggers, a collective known for street theater and=
 for passing out free food and leaflets.

=E2=80=9CI was writing =E2=80=98Revolutionary Letters=E2=80=99 at a fast cl=
ip and mailing them to Liberation News Service on a regular basis; from the=
re they went to over 200 free newspapers all over the U.S. and Canada,=E2=
=80=9D she said in a written version of her poet laureate talk. =E2=80=9CI =
also performed them, sometimes with guitar accompaniment by Peter Coyote, o=
n the steps of City Hall, while my comrades handed out the Digger Papers an=
d tried to persuade startled office workers on their way to lunch that they=
 should drop out and join the revolution.=E2=80=9D

She had arrived in San Francisco, she wrote, with =E2=80=9C14 grown-ups (so=
-called) and all their accompanying kids & pets, horns & typewriters, and a=
t least one rifle.=E2=80=9D

Advertisement
Continue reading the main story

Mr. Powell, in a phone interview, said such a caravan was not unusual. =E2=
=80=9CPeople constellated around her,=E2=80=9D he said. =E2=80=9CPeople wer=
e just drawn to the dynamo that was Diane.=E2=80=9D

Four of the children in that group were her own, by various fathers; a fift=
h came later.

In addition to her husband, whom she had been with for more than 40 years, =
and her brother Frank, her children =E2=80=94 Jeanne DiPrima, Dominique DiP=
rima, Alexander Marlowe, Tara Marlowe and Rudi DiPrima =E2=80=94 survive he=
r, along with another brother, Richard; five grandchildren; and three great=
-grandchildren.

One of Ms. di Prima=E2=80=99s best-loved poems, written in 1957 for her fir=
st child, Jeanne, is called =E2=80=9CSong for Baby-o, Unborn=E2=80=9D:

    Sweetheart,
    when you break thru
    you=E2=80=99ll find
    a poet here
    not quite what one would choose.
    I won=E2=80=99t promise
    you=E2=80=99ll never go hungry
    or that you won=E2=80=99t be sad
    on this gutted
    breaking
    globe
    but I can show you
    baby
    enough to love
    to break your heart
    forever.

One of the poems Ms. di Prima read at the event celebrating her appointment=
 as San Francisco=E2=80=99s poet laureate was =E2=80=9CThe Poetry Deal,=E2=
=80=9D written in 1993. It was, she explained to the audience, about the pa=
ct she had made with the poetry muse =E2=80=94 the =E2=80=9Cyou=E2=80=9D in=
 the poem was poetry itself. One verse goes like this:

    I=E2=80=99d like my daily bread however
    you arrange it, and I=E2=80=99d also like
    to be bread, or sustenance for
    some others even after I=E2=80=99ve left.
    A song they can walk a trail with.