Diane di Prima

Diane Di Prima (born August 6, 1934) is an American poet.

Biography

Early life

Di Prima was born in Brooklyn and attended Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan. Her official online biography notes that she is "a second generation American of Italian descent" and that "Her maternal grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, was an active anarchist, and associate of Carlo Tresca and Emma Goldman." Di Prima began writing as a child and by the age of 19 was corresponding with Ezra Pound and Kenneth Patchen. Her first book of poetry, This Kind of Bird Flies Backward was published in 1958 by Hettie and LeRoi Jones' Totem Press.

Involvement with the Beats

Di Prima spent the late 1950s and early 1960s in Manhattan, where she participated in the emerging Beat movement. She spent some time in California at Stinson Beach and Topanga Canyon, returned to New York City and eventually moved to San Francisco permanently. Di Prima was a bridge figure between the Beat movement and the later hippies, as well as between East Coast and West Coast artists. She edited The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and was co-founder of the New York Poets Theatre and founder of the Poets Press. In 1966, she spent some time at Millbrook with Timothy Leary's psychedelic community and printed the first two editions of "Psychodelic Prayers" by Leary in Spring 1966. In 1969, she wrote a fictionalized, erotic account detailing her experience in the Beat movement titled Memoirs of a Beatnik. In 2001, she published Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years.

Career

In the late 1960s, she moved permanently to California, where she has lived ever since. Here, she became involved with the Diggers and studied Buddhism, Sanskrit, Gnosticism and alchemy. She also published her major work, the long poem Loba, in 1978, with an enlarged edition in 1998. She is currently a writing teacher, and has published 35 books of poetry. Her selected poems, Pieces of a Song, was published in 1990 and a memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, in 2001.

Personal life

Di Prima is the mother of five.

Bibliography

• This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, Totem Press, New York, 1958
• Dinners and Nightmares (short stories), Corinth Books, 1961 (reissued Last Gasp, 1998)
• Seven Love Poems from the Middle Latin (translations), The Poets Press, 1965
• Poems for Freddie, 1966
• War Poems (editor), Poets Press, New York, 1968
• Memoirs of a Beatnik, Olympia Press, 1969 (reissued with new afterword, Last Gasp, 1988)
• The Book of Hours, 1970
• Selected Poems: 1956-1975, North Atlantic Books, Plainfield, 1975
• Loba, Part II, Eidolon Editions, Point Reyes, 1976
• Selected Poems: 1956-1976, North Atlantic Books, 1977
• Loba, Parts 1-8, 1978
• Revolutionary Letters, City Lights, 1971
• Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems, City Lights, 1990
• Recollections of My Life as a Woman The New York Years, Viking Press, NY, 2001

References

• Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)
• di Prima, Diane, and Jones, LeRoi [Imanu Amiri Baraka], eds. The Floating Bear, a newsletter: Numbers 1-37, 1961-1969. Introduction and notes adapted from interviews with Diane di Prima. La Jolla, California: Laurence McGilvery, 1973. ISBN 0910938547} (library binding)
• di Prima, Diane . Recollections Of My Life As A Woman. Viking USA. (2001) ISBN 0-670-85166-3

External links

• Diane di Prima Official Website
• Template:Worldcat id
• Kerouac Alley - Diane di Prima directory
• Di Prima Papers at University of Louisville
• Interview with Diana Di Prima on Modern Paganism from RE/Search
• "Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project di Prima participated in

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