Diane di Prima’s poems are bold, intimate, and fiercely rebellious, reflecting both her personal life and the radical spirit of postwar America. As one of the most important voices of the Beat Generation, di Prima wrote poetry that challenged social norms, especially around gender, sexuality, politics, and spiritual freedom.
Her poems often read like confessions—raw, urgent, and emotionally direct. She writes about love, desire, motherhood, poverty, and rebellion with a fearless honesty that was rare for women poets of her time. At the same time, her work is deeply political, shaped by antiwar activism, feminism, and resistance to authority. Poems such as those in Revolutionary Letters combine lyrical intensity with revolutionary anger and hope.
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Di Prima was also strongly influenced by Eastern philosophy, mysticism, and occult traditions. This spiritual dimension gives many of her poems a searching, visionary quality, where personal transformation and social change are inseparable.
Overall, Diane di Prima’s poetry stands as a powerful fusion of the personal and the political—intimate yet defiant, lyrical yet incendiary—making her a vital and enduring figure in modern American poetry.
Revolutionary Letter
I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines.
The Window
you are my bread
and the hairline
noise
of my bones
you are almost
the sea
you are not stone
or molten sound
I think
you have no hands
this kind of bird flies backward
and this love
breaks on a windowpane
where no light talks
this is not time
for crossing tongues
(the sand here
never shifts)
I think
tomorrow
turned you with his toe
and you will
shine
and shine
unspent and underground
An Exercise in Love
My friend wears my scarf at his waist
I give him moonstones
He gives me shell & seaweeds
He comes from a distant city & I meet him
We will plant eggplants & celery together
He weaves me cloth
Many have brought the gifts
I use for his pleasure
silk, & green hills
& heron the color of dawn
My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind
He backlights my dreams
He has built altars beside my bed
I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember
his name, or my own.
Buddhist New Year Song
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
brought down with me
to this sullen and dingy place that we must make golden
make precious and mythical somehow, it is our nature,
and it is truth, that we came here, I told you,
from other planets
where we were lords, we were sent here,
for some purpose
the golden mask I had seen before, that fitted
so beautifully over your face, did not return
nor did that face of a bull you had acquired
amid northern peoples, nomads, the Gobi desert
I did not see those tents again, nor the wagons
infinitely slow on the infinitely windy plains,
so cold, every star in the sky was a different color
the sky itself a tangled tapestry, glowing
but almost, I could see the planet from which we had come
I could not remember (then) what our purpose was
but remembered the name Mahakala, in the dawn
in the dawn confronted Shiva, the cold light
revealed the “mindborn” worlds, as simply that,
I watched them propagated, flowing out,
or, more simply, one mirror reflecting another.
then broke the mirrors, you were no longer in sight
nor any purpose, stared at this new blackness
the mindborn worlds fled, and the mind turned off:
a madness, or a beginning?
City Lights 1961
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
those rickety white tables where folks sat reading/writing
Vesuvio’s was like an adjunct office
Arriving again a year later, two kids in tow
Lawrence gave me a huge stack of his publications
“I’ve got books” he said “like other people have mice”
And North Beach never stopped being mysterious
when I moved out here in 1968
that publishing office on Filbert & Grant was a mecca
a place to meet up with my kids if we got separated
during one of those innumerable demonstrations
(tho Lawrence worried, told me I shd keep them
out of harm’s way, at home) I thought they shd learn
whatever it was we were learning—
Office right around the corner from the bead store
where I found myself daily, picking up supplies
How many late nights did we haunt the Store
buying scads of new poems from all corners of the earth
then head to the all-night Tower Records full of drag queens
& revolutionaries, to get a few songs
And dig it, City Lights still here, like some old lighthouse
though all the rest is gone,
the poetry’s moved upstairs, the publishing office
right there now too & crowds of people
one third my age or less still haunt the stacks
seeking out voices from all quarters
of the globe.
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
The Belltower
the weighing is done in autumn
and the sifting
what is to be threshed
is threshed in autumn
what is to be gathered is taken
the wind does not die in autumn
the moon
shifts endlessly thru flying clouds
in autumn the sea is high
& a golden light plays everywhere
making it harder
to go one's way.
all leavetaking is in autumn
where there is leavetaking
it is always autumn
& the sun is a crystal ball
on a golden stand
& the wind
cannont make the spruce scream
loud enough
