Conversations with Diane di Prima

David Stephen Calonne

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781496839671
• eBook ISBN: 9781496839688
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Biografías literarias

Diane di Prima (1934–2020) was one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century, and her career is distinguished by strong contributions to both literature and social justice. Di Prima and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) edited The Floating Bear (1962–69), one of the most significant underground publications of the sixties. Di Prima's poetry and prose chronicle her opposition to the Vietnam War; her advocacy of the rights of Blacks, Native Americans, and the LGBTQ community; her concern about environmental issues; and her commitment to creating a world free of exploitation and poverty. In addition, di Prima is significant due to her challenges to the roles that American women were expected to play in society. Her Memoirs of a Beatnik was a sensation, and she talks about its lasting impact as well. Conversations with Diane di Prima presents twenty interviews ranging from 1972 to 2010 that chart di Prima's intellectual, spiritual, and political evolution. From her adolescence, di Prima was fascinated by occult, esoteric, and magical philosophies. In these interviews readers can see the ways these concepts influenced both her personal life and her poetry and prose. We are able to view di Prima's life course from her year at Swarthmore College; her move back to New York and then to San Francisco; her studies of Zen Buddhism; her fascination with the I Ching, Paracelsus, John Dee, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, alchemy, Tarot, and Kabbalah; and her later engagement with Tibetan Buddhism and work with Chögyam Trungpa. Another particularly interesting aspect of the book is the inclusion of interviews that explore di Prima's career as an independent publisher—she founded Poets Press in New York and Eidolon Editions in California—and her commitment to promoting writers such as Audre Lorde. Taken together, these interviews reveal di Prima as both a writer of genius and an intensely honest, direct, passionate, and committed advocate of a revolution in consciousness.

Index

• ABC of Reading (Pound), x, xxi, 59, 69, 140, 170
• Abrams, Sam, 23, 29, 143, 146
• Abstract Expressionism, 146
• Acker, Kathy, xiv, xxviii, xxix; death, xxx
• Actors’ Studio, 68
• Afghanistan, war with, 193–94
• Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, xi, xxviii, 110, 181
• AIDS, 153, 183
• Alchemical Studies (di Prima), 84, 104
• alchemy, xi, xiii, xvi, xxviii, 31, 83–84, 88–89, 94, 99, 101, 104, 106, 128, 130, 153–55, 176–77, 182–84
• Algren, Nelson, 202
• Allen, Donald, 167–68
• Also Sprach Zarathustra (Nietzsche), xx
• American Italian Historical Society, xxix
• American Medical Association, 13
• Ananda Ashram, xxiv
• Annual Northern California Book
• Awards, xxx “Another Wyoming Song” (di Prima), 29
• Apache reservation, 36
• Armitage, Simon, 151
• Ars Interpres: An International Journal of Poetry, xv, 190–99
• Art of Memory, The (Yates), 184
• Art Students’ League, 68
• Artaud, Antonin, 173
• Arthur’s Tavern, 66
• Arts-in-Social-Institutions Fellowship, xxvii
• Ashbery, John, xvi, xxiv, xxv, 26, 81, 196
• astrology, 3–4
• Atg...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Diane di Prima
• Diane di Prima Interviewed in Great Falls
• An Interview with Diane di Prima
• Diane di Prima: Poet
• Interview with Diane di Prima
• My Work Is My Life: An Interview with Diane di Prima
• Interview with Diane di Prima
• Interview with Diane di Prima
• The Gnosis Interview: Diane di Prima on Magic, Healing, and the Western Esoteric Tradition
• Art, Magic, and the Dharma: An Interview with Diane di Prima
• The Beatnik and the Rapper: Hipster Poet, Hip-Hop Daughter Ride the Same Wavelengths
• Diane di Prima: Memoirs of a Beatnik
• An Interview with Diane di Prima
• A Poet’s Take on Life and Learning
• The Movement of the Mind: Tim Kindberg Talks to Diane di Prima in San Francisco
• The Tapestry of Possibility: Diane di Prima Speaks of Poetry, Rapture, and Invoking Co-Responding Magic
• Diane di Prima in Conversation with David Hadbawnik
• Diane di Prima Interview
• Diane di Prima in Conversation: Not on the Road
• Interview: Diane di Prima
• Index
• About the Editor