Cheer Up: Reminders
Furnace. The first evening, about 5 o’clock, the pain from the extreme heat, exhaustion, and headaches make me completely lose control of my movements. I can’t lower the furnace damper. A coppersmith jumps up and…
Tag: Diane di Prima
Present Moment, Only Moment: Reminders
You only live once. Keep yourself in the present. The past is gone, and the future is unknown. –Tempu Nakamura, in John Stevens, Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters Do not lose yourself in the…
What Two Women Think
A roshi is a person who has actualized that perfect freedom which is the potentiality for all human beings. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. The flow of his consciousness is…
Somewhere Along the Line the Pearl Would Be Handed to Me
In the bar I told Dean, “Hell, man, I know very well you didn’t come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except…
From a Recent Notebook
Of course, Diane di Prima is in My Canon… Because she honored Suzuki Roshi’s unprecedented presenceBecause she made the case for old-school being literally in touchBecause she gave primacy to cosmologyBecause I gifted C. with…
A Woman Who Is Part of the Proletariat of Billions of Artists
For Elizabeth Jane Burkemper This week I took a couple of days to read David Stephen Calonne’s new collection, Conversations with Dianne di Prima. In fall 2018, several friends and I explored di Prima in…
Jack and Allen
This website is indebted in a variety of ways to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. For example, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from their one-liners such as “Be in love with yr life” (JK)…
Exploring di Prima
Dear Poet. I finally got my Walt class together… maybe you could join us as a guest speaker at some point, tell us what you thought of him. But if you are indeed interested/curious about…
These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things—A Winter Class to Take Us into Spring
Somehow [Bonnie] forced you to see yourself at your most amazing. Most precious. And believe in what you saw. She saw. A ll obstacles fell into shadow, disappeared, backlit by the blaze of what could…