Diane di Prima
born in Brooklyn, New York, she is, undeniably, the most well – known female Beat poet. She attended Swarthmore College, then moved to Greenwich Village to become part of the Bohemian intellectual culture. She is the author of 43 books of poetry and prose. Loba: Books I & II was published in the Penguin Poets Series in August 1998. Her autobiographical memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, was published by Viking in April 2001. Recent poetry chapbooks include Towers Down (with Clive Matson), published by Eidolon Editions in 2002; The Ones I Used to Laugh With, Habenicht Press, San Francisco, 2003, and TimeBomb, Eidolon Editions 2006. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages. She has received writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the National Poetry Association, and an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University. In 2002, she was one of three finalists to be named the first Poet Laureate of California. She has taught poetry and spirituality courses at New College of California, California College of Arts and Crafts, and the San Francisco Art Institute. She has lived in San Francisco since 1968 where, in 2009, she was named Poet Laureate.
Night Streets Crystal
by Ron Loewinsohn
The streets at night
Run broad and bright
deep into the heart
where they take me to myself.
The streets at night
Are filled with light
And form a crystal
Where my love lives.
The trees at night
Line the streets
Like a green smoke
At the edges of thought.
The night in the trees’ branches
Has a thousand crystals
Where my love lives.
The branches of the tree of night
Are the streets of the dark crystal
That take me to myself. The magic of
The streets at night is the crystal
They make, broad and bright,
As I drive home away from you,
Yet in the green smoke
At the edges of thought,
In the night filled with trees,
In the streets filled with night,
The incantation of you
Creates a crystal
Wherein “Far” is measured
In the hours since I’ve seen you,
And “Near” in the beat of your heart.
Zero: The Fool
by Ron Loewinsohn
His sky is the same yellow as his boots,
which appear to be thin and ill – suited for
the craggy heights where he dances
without care.
His sun is only a quarter sun, its rays
cartoon-like. The jagged Alps in the distance
behind him look like fangs, but the mountains
below those fangs are blue, and might be
little more than dream – Alps. His little
dog must think it queer to dance like this
on a cliff so sheer.
I’ve always thought of this card as
my card, but the youth only blesses,
his arms outstretched: his world, his orchestra,
and he, exhorting it to the inevitable
cadenza that awaits him just beyond
this moment on the card.
His number is zero:
the 1 that counts for nothing.
Blood and Sand
by Jack Spicer
It is as if the poem moves
Without the poem. I have captured you.
Done all my will. Have done with all
Emotion.
There is something that bothers me about the poem
Not anything real. But a poem. Your body
The noise that nothing makes upon the shore of an ocean
The big without.
It is as if a poem moves
Without your reality. Your not being there
That defines a nice set of arms
Not holding.
Not holding what. An absentness of you.
This bed is there. Defined,
Without the poem.
Jack Spicer, “Blood and Sand, ”1959, from the Homage to Creeley notebooks at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, appears here courtesy of the Literary Estate of Jack Spicer.