Diane di Prima

Nu är den äntligen här, 766 sidor och 9 poeter stor - 50 år efter Kerouac och 43 år efter Allen Ginsberg på svenska, presenteras nu världens omfångsrikaste antologi med kvinnliga beatpoeter! Carol Bergé, Elise Cowen, Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones, Lenore Kandel, Joanne Kyger, Joanna McClure, Janine Pommy Vega, Anne Waldman. Antologin bjuder på stora dikturval av dessa poeter från USA och följer deras författarskap över de senaste 50 åren. De flesta introduceras för första gången på svenska och en del dikter publiceras för första gången överhuvudtaget. Boken innehåller också författarpresentationer, fördjupande efterord och ett stort antal noter till dikterna. Urval och översättning av Kristian Carlsson.

Diane di Prima skrev Revolutionsbreve over det meste af et liv. Hun begyndte at skrive dem i slutningen af 1960’erne og fortsatte med at redigere dem indtil sin død i 2020. Revolutionsbreve er således både politiske digte samtidig med, at de optegner et levet liv. De er skrevet ind i en amerikansk kontekst, men også en vestlig. De bevidner udviklingen fra de flippede sene 60’ere til en stadig mere militant og politiseret atmosfære i 1970erne og videre gennem modstanden mod Vietnamkrigen, energikrisen i 1973, mordene på Harvey Milk og George Moscone i San Francisco 1979, til 9/11 og frem til Golfkrigen og krigen i Afghanistan. Di Prima forblev engageret i den politiske og eksistentielle kamp hele sit liv. Nogle af digtene er anvisende, nærmest manualagtige. De beskriver, hvordan man bedst forbereder sig på en nødsituation, hvordan man lever så sparsomt som muligt, og på forudseende vis indvarsler de, at det vestlige overforbrug må få en ende. Revolutionsbreve er et feministisk modsvar til et undertrykkende statsapparat. Revolutionsbreve er første værk af di Prima, der udgives på dansk. Di Prima omtales ofte som en kvindelig beatdigter. Hun skrev en enkelt direkte nervelyrik, som Tania Ørum beskriver det i forordet til bogen, med den ekspressive og eksistensielle indgangsvinkel, hun også har til fælles med beatdigterne. Diane di Prima var inspireret af dans – hun var selv danser – billedkunst, musik, litteratur. Hun startede bl.a. det litterære tidsskrift The Floating Bear, som kun blev omdelt med post. Hun havde sit eget offset-trykkeri, hvor hun selv trykte sine revolutionsbreve og sendte dem til venner og bekendte.

By turns a handbook of countercultural living, a manual for street protest, and a feminist broadside against the repressive state apparatus, Revolutionary Letters is a modern classic, as relevant today as it was at its inception, 50 years ago.

"The Poetry Deal: San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 5 gives us di Prima's vision as she looks back at a life lived truly and looks out at a society she still has hope for even as it grieves its failings."--David Nilsen, Fourth & Sycamore: A Literary Journal "The Poetry Deal shines with eros and kindness and the reality of inspiration. No American or Anarchist voice or soul-building heart has ever been more clear. The pages are fierce with love and generosity."--Michael McClure, author of Ghost Tantras "The Poetry Deal is fresh flame from a revolutionary fire that continues to burn. Every woman of every age should carry it in a purse with their pepper spray. Diane is the ultimate weapon."--Amber Tamblyn, author of Dark Sparkler "In her latest collection as San Francisco Poet Laureate, di Prima is again at the height of her powers, with 'the act of writing itself more compelling than ever.'"--Micah Ballard, author of Waifs and Strays "I return to this book again and again to remember what it means to own and further a poetic and political lineage."--Ana Bozicevic, author of Rise in the Fall "The Poetry Deal [is] an urgent success of the highest order ... Diane di Prima should always be high on the American poetry play list. "--Barbara Berman, The Rumpus "Recounting a life in poetry, her commitment to progressive thought and action, and a half-century of Bay Area culture, crises, and change, di Prima writes at the top of her game ...di Prima recalls the time an institutionalized Ezra Pound told her that 'poets have to eat'; rarely has a poet left so much bread on the table for future poets."--*Starred Review, Publishers Weekly "This is a volume that traverses the specific and reaches the universal. She marks her poems with great strength and utmost sensitivity. They are poems that live in real time; not cyberspace. di Prima's poetry is well-lived and poetry worth living in. She is a gifted teacher enjoining the reader to face life's lessons for the attendant dilemmas of old age. Carry this book with you. It will arm you with continuous insight and flaming provocation."--Robert Sutherland-Cohen The Poetry Deal is the first full-length collection of individual poems in decades from legendary feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima. Framed by two passionate, and critical, prose statements assessing her adopted home city, The Poetry Deal is a collection of poems that provide a personal and political look at forty years of Bay Area culture. Often elegiac in tone, the book captures the poet's sense of loss as she chronicles the deaths of friends from the AIDS epidemic as well as the passing of illustrious countercultural colleagues like Philip Whalen, Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, and Kirby Doyle. She also recalls and mourns out-of-town inspirations like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Audre Lorde, and Ezra Pound. Yet even as she laments the state of her city today, she finds triumph and solace in her own relationships, the marriages of her friends, the endurance of City Lights, and other symbols of San Francisco's heritage. Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Diane di Prima emerged as a member of the Beat Generation in New York in the late '50s; in the early '60s, she founded the important mimeo magazine The Floating Bear with her lover LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). In the late '60s, she moved to San Francisco, where she would publish her groundbreaking Revolutionary Letters (1971) with City Lights. Her other important books include Memoirs of a Beatnik, Pieces of a Dream, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, and Loba. She was named San Francisco Poet

In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

"Diane di Prima, revolutionary activist of the 1960s Beat literary renaissance, heroic in life and poetics: a learned humorous bohemian, classically educated and twentieth-century radical, her writing, informed by Buddhist equanimity, is exemplary in imagist, political and mystical modes. A great woman poet in second half of American century, she broke barriers of race-class identity, delivered a major body of verse brilliant in its particularity." -- Allen Ginsberg "With di Prima's selected poems, Pieces of a Song ...we have a chance to examine the powerful gifts this deeply imaginative poet has to offer us ..." --Jack Foley, Poetry Previews (website) "A prolific writer generally associated with the Beat Generation, di Prima deserves wider recognition." --Library Journal "She is not about to be regarded merely as a literary figurehead, but as an ongoing contributor to the arts--a presence whose voice continues to positively impact those who listen, as it has for the last half-century." --Verbicide Magazine Feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Swarthmore College for two years before moving to Greenwich Village in Manhattan and becoming a writer in the emerging Beat movement. There, she developed friendships with poets Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O'Hara, and Audre Lorde. After joining Timothy Leary's intentional community in upstate New York, she moved to San Francisco in 1968. One of her collections of poetry, The Poetry Deal, is also published by City Lights Publishers. Di Prima was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2009. She has been awarded the National Poetry Association's Lifetime Service Award and the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Committee on Poetry, the Lapis Foundation, and the Institute for Aesthetic Development. St. Lawrence University granted her an honorary doctorate.

Loba is a visionary epic quest for the reintegration of the femimine, hailed by many as the great female counterpart to Allen Ginsberg's Howl when the first half appeared in 1978. Now published for the first time in its completed form with new material, Loba, "she-wolf" in Spanish explores the wilderness at the heart of experience, through the archetype of the wolf goddess, elemental symbol of complete self-acceptance.

Long regarded as an underground classic for its gritty and unabashedly erotic portrayal of the Beat years, Memoirs of a Beatnik is a moving account of a powerful woman artist coming of age sensually and intellectually in a movement dominated by a small confederacy of men, many of whom she lived with and loved. Filled with anecdotes about her adventures in New York City, Diane di Prima's memoir shows her learning to "raise her rebellion into art," and making her way toward literary success. Memoirs of a Beatnik offers a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumphs of the imagination.