"As San Francisco goes through the drastic changes ushered in by the booming tech economy, here comes a collection of new poems from one of the city’s cultural stalwarts--her first full-length book in decades. A feminist and an early member of the Beats, di Prima reflects on her life in the Bay Area in what her publisher calls an 'often elegiac' work. The 80-year-old former San Francisco Poet Laureate notes what has been lost in the city she’s called home since the ‘60s, but also celebrates what endures."--Oscar Villalon, KQED Books
"From her early days as a member of the Beat generation in the 1950s to her selection as San Francisco poet laureate in 2009, Diane di Prima has been essential to the Bay Area literary scene. This slim volume of new works finds her still pursuing the personal and political interests that have shaped her career. Framed by two prose statements reflecting on San Francisco, the poems chronicle love and loss, war and AIDS, and remembrances of fellow writers, poets and thinkers."--Georgia Rowe, Bay Area News Group
"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
"The Poetry Deal is di Prima's first full-length book of new poems in decades. It includes poignant pieces about loss and aging, as well as impassioned political verse and odes to such diverse figures as the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the Caribbean-American writer and activist Audre Lorde."--Andrea Miller, Shambhala Sun
" . . . di Prima's concerns transcend her own condition and do the broader work of poetry, which 'constantly renews our seeing: so we can speak the constantly changing Truth' . . . Neither naïve nor jaded, di Prima continues to write what she sees and to encourage our attention."--Marla Johnson, World Literature Today
"From 2008 to 2011, Diane di Prima served as Poet Laureate of San Francisco, and The Poetry Deal, her first full-length collection of poems in nearly fifteen years, is her gift to us. . . . More than anything it is generous, and I am so grateful for the generosity of this book and for this poet, who reminds us that, even in our desperate grasping, there is 'no season / that is not / a Season of Song…'"--Maryam Parhizkar, The Poetry Project Newsletter
"As San Francisco goes through the drastic changes ushered in by the booming tech economy, here comes a collection of new poems from one of the city’s cultural stalwarts--her first full-length book in decades. A feminist and an early member of the Beats, di Prima reflects on her life in the Bay Area in what her publisher calls an 'often elegiac' work. The 80-year-old former San Francisco Poet Laureate notes what has been lost in the city she’s called home since the ‘60s, but also celebrates what endures."--Oscar Villalon, KQED Books
"From her early days as a member of the Beat generation in the 1950s to her selection as San Francisco poet laureate in 2009, Diane di Prima has been essential to the Bay Area literary scene. This slim volume of new works finds her still pursuing the personal and political interests that have shaped her career. Framed by two prose statements reflecting on San Francisco, the poems chronicle love and loss, war and AIDS, and remembrances of fellow writers, poets and thinkers."--Georgia Rowe, Bay Area News Group
"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
"The Poetry Deal is di Prima's first full-length book of new poems in decades. It includes poignant pieces about loss and aging, as well as impassioned political verse and odes to such diverse figures as the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the Caribbean-American writer and activist Audre Lorde."--Andrea Miller, Shambhala Sun
" . . . di Prima's concerns transcend her own condition and do the broader work of poetry, which 'constantly renews our seeing: so we can speak the constantly changing Truth' . . . Neither naïve nor jaded, di Prima continues to write what she sees and to encourage our attention."--Marla Johnson, World Literature Today
"From 2008 to 2011, Diane di Prima served as Poet Laureate of San Francisco, and The Poetry Deal, her first full-length collection of poems in nearly fifteen years, is her gift to us. . . . More than anything it is generous, and I am so grateful for the generosity of this book and for this poet, who reminds us that, even in our desperate grasping, there is 'no season / that is not / a Season of Song…'"--Maryam Parhizkar, The Poetry Project Newsletter
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.
Di Prima has published more than 40 books. Her poetry collections include This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards (1958), the long poem Loba (1978, expanded 1998), and Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems(2001). She is also the author of the short story collection Dinners and Nightmares (1960), the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of a Beatnik ;(1968), and the memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (2001).
With Amiri Baraka, she co-edited the literary magazine The Floating Bear from 1961 to 1969. She co-founded the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre and founded Eidolon Editions and the Poets Institute. A follower of Buddhism, she also co-founded the San Francisco Institute of Magical and Healing Arts.
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.
She has taught at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and in the Masters-in-Poetics program at the New College of California. Selections of her papers are held at the University of Louisville, Indiana University, Southern Illinois University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s libraries. Di Prima lives in Northern California.
Diane di Prima passed away on October 25th, 2020.
