P BOOK REVIEW 3 B o The Great Feminist Beat Poet’s o k e n First Book in Decades: A Review of d Diane di Prima’s The Poetry Deal s Title: The Poetry Deal, by Diane di Prima. Poet Laureate Series Number what wd you be willing 5. City Lights Foundation, San . Francisco. 109 pages. to pay? Reviewed by: Stephanie McKenzie to see them eminist beat poet Diane di . Prima's latest collection, The walk out of there Poetry Deal, is a refreshing whole F critique and celebration of life. not widowed This is di Prima's “first volume of or orphaned (71) new poetry in decades” (back blurb). “Haiti, Chile, Tibet,” the book's strongest poem, reminds one that the spirit Born in New York, di Prima moved to San that drove the beats was not-for di Prima--a Francisco in 1968. She has “published more fleeting trend. “LET'S STOP FOR A MOMENT than 40 books. With Amiri Baraka, she TO REMEMBER WHAT WE ARE” (73), the co-edited the literary magazine The Floating poem begins, and, then, reflects, “ALL Bear from 1961 to 1969. She co-founded the BORDERS DISAPPEAR IN CATASTROPHE” Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre (74). Di Prima commands “GIVE UP and founded Eidolon Editions and the Poets CONFUSING YR PROPERTY WITH YOUR LIFE” Institute. A follower of Buddhism, she also (75). co-founded the San Francisco Institute of The Poetry Deal is a polished, raw Magical and Healing Arts. Di Prima was tribute to voices that remain revolutionary. named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in This verse smacks of the unapologetic 2009. (http://www.poetryfoundation.org). wisdom of Marley, the vision of Blake and Having come to San Francisco for the first Yeats, the stylistics of Langston Hughes. I time, I headed to City Lights Bookstore - the wondered, for a second, if di Prima should iconic symbol of the beat poetry movement - maybe move to Jamaica, the real cutting almost immediately. This was the land of edge of talent where, in di Prima's words, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and, of true artists course, di Prima, and City Lights was the . keep harbinger of revolution and risk. I couldn't a hair wait to hit the stacks. ahead How strange it was, after all the stories, to of the wander through North Beach onto Columbus beat (from “The Poetry Reading” 80) Ave. amongst money and privilege. This is Then I reflected on those poems dedicated not to denigrate the area: North Beach, to di Prima's friends who died of AIDS, and I J where City Lights is located, is, like the rest a remembered the rights, including gay rights, n of city, amazingly friendly. For all its money, for which di Prima and her friends fought and u San Francisco is remarkably kind. But it's just will. That's why the hunger for poetry grows few new songs (from “City Lights 1961”) a how they sought inspiration from Civil Rights that, well . To go into City Lights amidst when the world grows dark” (di Prima 107). However, beginning with her introduction--a r activists. I recalled this generation's new y the wealth and rumours of what it would Di Prima speaks the truth in a spare, transcription of her inaugural address as poet Jamaican visionary Kei Miller and his portrait 1 cost these days to live in the neighbourhood sparse style reminiscent of modernist verse laureate--until the very end of the book, di of homophobia in Jamaica, housed in his 1 - or anywhere else in San Francisco, for that but pounding with the heartbeat of the San Prima protests. She praises the San , powerful collection of essays Writing Down matter - made me wonder how this place Francisco di Prima recalls with nostalgia: “I Francisco she came to but laments what, for 2 the Vision: Essays and Prophecies. I couldn't 0 could ever have given birth to the came here” from New York, di Prima explains her, the city has lost and become: “How did 1 shake knowing that Jamaica's laws would “angelheaded hipsters” (Ginsberg “Howl”) in the book's introduction, “to work in new we allow ourselves to be derailed? So badly 5 have condemned a large chunk of friends whom Ginsberg wrote about; today's ways for change: the grace of possibility that derailed that I read in the Chronicle last week with whom di Prima locked her voice in a T hipsters seem to pay a fortune to look had opened on this coast” (2). For di Prima, that if you can't pay your rent in this town H struggle for all human rights. E ironically akin to the “poverty and tatters” San Francisco, back in the day, embodied the and you have school-age kids, you won't be That's the deal with poetry, I guess. S (“Howl”) of the sixties, and I couldn't imagine resolute desire to fight for these things: “I evicted until the school year ends - how U It makes you unable to lie. N Ginsberg or any of his crew dining in North came to new dreams . [b]ecause in the stupid is that?” (15) “Remember,” di Prima D The Poetry Deal ends with a poetic A Beach or being let in to many of the New York of the 1950s, where I came of age cautions in “Memorial Day, 2003,” “life Y anecdote remindful of the riddles Marley and establishments for that matter. as a poet, one wrote one's dreams, but didn't hangs by a thread . Remember it's not a O Miss Lou often relied upon: “At a reading for B However, I did find a vestige of that past: try to make them happen” (2). Notably, di safe time & all the more reason / To do S the Sandinistas long ago, my son Rudi said: E that daring devotion to ideals that typified Prima makes clear that City Lights housed whole-heartedly what you have to do” (64). R All artists are warriors, aren't they, Mom? V that generation who ceaselessly fought for the hope people still search for: Di Prima's honesty and convictions E That's because there's so many parts to art.” R human rights. It is found in di Prima's The How many late nights did remain firm. One of the strongest pieces in (109) Poetry Deal. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, we haunt the Store this collection, “& About Obama,” shapes the w This is a collection well worth w the book is, above everything, a love letter to buying scads of new president not as a politician rendered getting, though it is obvious di Prima's voice w . poetry itself - an art form many have poems from all corners of the compliant and constricted by a Senate but as j a can't really be bought. m associated for centuries with a quest for a human being overpowered by love - what a i truth. The collection begins, “[i]t is the poem earth The Poetry Deal suggests is the greatest c a I serve” (from “First Draft: Poet Laureate o then head to the all-night human condition: b Stephanie McKenzie is an associate s Oath of Office” 17), and, in “Some Words Tower Records full of if you were living e professor, English Programme, Memorial r v About the Poem,” di Prima suggests that to in the enemy's house e University of Newfoundland (Grenfell r . serve the poem means to tell the truth: drag-queens wife & kids there too c Campus), Canada. o “Poets speak truth when no one else can or & revolutionaries, to get a . m.