Di Prima

Elle ne fait pas que porter du noir, et surtout, elle parle! Le mouvement beat est souvent présenté comme un univers d'artistes masculins inspirés par des muses.

La place importante et active des femmes est encore aujourd'hui peu reconnue. Apparemment pour Kerouac, la plupart des femmes dans le mouvement beat sont des pullovers noirs qui bougent mais qui ne l'ouvrent pas.
Pas Diane Di Prima.

Poèmes magnifiques, beatnik qui cherche à comprendre le bouddhisme (et ne se contente pas de mettre du bambou dans un vase épuré ethnic fusion pour "s'épanouir spirituellement") et pourtant poétesse relativement méconnue. Elle est née dans les années 30 dans une famille récemment immigrée d'Italie, s'en éloigne, vit sa vie, étudie à New York, "entre" dans le mouvement beat, écrit, enseigne... Bref, une femme très active.

Ses textes valent la peine d'être lus, relus, puis lus à nouveau, juste pour voir si les mots ne s'envolent pas une fois qu'on quitte leur ligne, et je n'ai qu'une seule hâte, mettre la main sur Pieces of a Song et ses Mémoires pour la connaître davantage.

Suivent quatre poèmes qui donnent une petite idée de l'étendue de son art: "The Window", "Chronology", "First Snow, Kerhonkson - for Alan" et "My lover's eyes are nothing like the sun".

Profitez de la lecture de ses poèmes, un séminaire avec elle coûte près de 300 dollars. Ca me rappelle un peu Audre Lorde, mais je laisse cela à l'appréciation de chacun. Dès que je mets la main sur Pieces of a Song, je vous passe des poèmes qui ne sont pas forcéent disponibles sur le net pour ceux que ça intéresse.

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 backwards
and this love
breaks on a windowpane
where no light talks

this is not the 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

Chronology

I loved you in October
when you hid behind your hair
and rode your shadow
in the corners of the house

and in November you invaded
filling the air
above my bed with dreams
cries for some kind of help
on my inner ear

in December I held your hands
one afternoon; the light failed
it came back on
in a dawn on the Scottish coast
you singing us ashore

now it is January, you are fading
into your double
jewels on his cape, your shadow on the snow,
you slide away on wind, the crystal air
carries your new songs in snatches thru the windows
of our sad, high, pretty rooms

First Snow, Kerhonkson - for Alan

This, then, is the gift the world has given me
(you have given me)
softly the snow
cupped in the hollows
lying on the surface of the pond
matching my long white candles
which stand at the window
which will burn at dusk while the snow
fills up our valley
this hollow
no friend will wander down
no one arriving brown from Mexico
from the sunfields of California, bearing pot
they are scattered now, dead or silent
or blasted to madness
by the howling brightness of our once common vision
and this gift of yours-
white silence filling the contours of my life.

My Lover's Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun

These eyes are amber, they
have no pupils, they are filled
w/a blue light (fire).
They are the eyes of gods
the eyes of insects, straying
godmen of the galaxy, metallic
wings.
Those eyes were green
are still, sea green, or grey
their light
less defined. These sea-green
eyes spin dreams on the
palpable air. They are not yrs
or mine. It is as if the dead
saw thru our eyes, other for a moment
borrowed these windows, gazing.
We keep still. It is as if these windows
filled for a minute w/a different
light.

Not blue, not amber. But the curtain drawn
over our daily gaze is drawn aside.
Who are you, really. I have seen it
often enough, the naked
gaze of power. We "charge"
the other with it / the leap
into non-betrayal, a wind
w/ out sound we live in. Where
are we, really, climbing
the sides of buildings to peer in
like spiderman, at windows
not our own