Diane di Prima

Rating: 4.33
Rating: 4.33

Diane di Prima Poems

I am a shadow crossing ice
I am rusting knife in the water
I am pear tree bitten by frost
I uphold the mountain with my hand
...

for Jackson Allen
My friend wears my scarf at his waist
I give him moonstones
He gives me shell & seaweeds
...

Sweetheart
when you break thru
you'll find
...

she is the wind you never leave behind
black cat you killed in empty lot, she is
smell of the summer weeds, the one who lurks
...

Going there for the first time
it was so much smaller then
that crowded downstairs full of poetry
racks of tattered little mags against the wall
...

I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
"There are stars in your hair"— it was truth I
...

that she is eternal, that she sings
that she is star-born, that she gathers crystal
that she can be confused with Isis
...

for there is another Lilith, not made for earth
of whom it is said / that when she is seen by men
it is as vapour / a plague / a cacophony
...

Shall we say that the streets were littered
w/ half-eaten food
dry leaves, debris of plastic & paper
...

for Alan
This, then, is the gift the world has given me
(you have given me)
softly the snow
...

Extract the juice which is itself a Light.

Pulp, manna, gentle
Theriasin, ergot
...

you are my bread
and the hairline
noise
of my bones
...

Diane di Prima Biography

Diane di Prima (born August 6, 1934) is an American poet and artist. Di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1934. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan. Her official online biography notes that she is "a second generation American of Italian descent" and that "Her maternal grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, was an active anarchist, and associate of Carlo Tresca and Emma Goldman." Di Prima began writing as a child and by the age of 19 was corresponding with Ezra Pound and Kenneth Patchen. Her first book of poetry, This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, was published in 1958 by Hettie and LeRoi Jones' Totem Press.)

The Best Poem Of Diane di Prima

"I am a shadow…"

I am a shadow crossing ice
I am rusting knife in the water
I am pear tree bitten by frost
I uphold the mountain with my hand
My feet are cut by glass
I walk in the windy forest after dark
I am wrapped in a gold cloud
I whistle thru my teeth
I lose my hat

My eyes are fed to eagles & my jaw
is locked with silver wire
I have burned often and my bones are soup
I am stone giant statue on a cliff

I am mad as a blizzard
I stare out of broken cupboards

Diane di Prima Comments

Kenneth Kelbaugh 06 October 2018

I am trying to find a poem that has the following lines and I believe it was written by Diane di Prima. I wonder if someone could help me confirm that these are her words, and in which poem the words were presented, and if not hers let me know. Thank you what is life, but a dream of all that is not scene-inbetween- of poets that perhaps know-it. for to fail it, you must own it in the rythm (rhythm?) of the current......

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