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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780140587524
ISBN: 0140587527
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 256
Publication Date: 1998-08-01
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "It is the Word that is the Ground of Love..."
Review: "It is the Word that is the Ground of Love..."

Diane di Prima is one of the most talented twentieth century American women poets, and the most important female figure of the Beat literary movement. She has authored thirty four books, including the two that have appeared in 1998, Loba, and the re-issued edition of Memoirs of a Beatnik, a classic of Beat narrative-a witty chronicle of the cultural conditions from which it grew. When the first part of Loba first appeared in 1978, it was hailed as the female counterpart to Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Loba is a series of poems forming a compact whole, presenting in a visionary manner all forms of the female experience. Anyone who knows Diane di Prima and her work knows that she is Loba, the protagonist of the work and the focal point of the poems. Loba, meaning she-wolf in Spanish, is an archetypal figure, fusing qualities that are both human and animal, terrestrial and divine. Diane di Prima's poetry has been essentially lyrical, even in its most radical aspects, but she has chosen to define this work of her maturity as an epic, inasmuch as an epic is a narrative poetic work about a quest. As in all epics, di Prima starts in a present time that echoes the past and that clearly foreshadows the portion of the journey to come: the conclusion. The poem opens with an invocation to the "lost moon sisters", to whom di Prima's poetry is addressed, who all partake of the divine multiplicity of the wolf-goddess. As poet Marge Piercey commented, di Prima, in this book, has taken from many mythologies to create her own. Loba is not just one figure, rather, it is a conglomeration of the re-incarnations of many personae within one character. We see the Loba under many other masks: in Flanders, we see her in the soft light of a Vermeer painting; in the exquisite Kali-ma versions, she is "as fresh as jasmine", but also bloody and ferocious; we see her also as the Maternal Principle, singing to her children or making an amulet for her daughter; we see her as the principle of Female Creation, Lilith; geographically, we see her in the most diverse places, from Brooklyn to the Bardo; we see her young, ageless and as an old hag. Born in Brooklyn in 1934, having lived in Manhattan for a period of time, Diane di Prima moved to Northern California where she has lived for the past thirty years. She has studied Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, and has delved in the science of alchemy and in the western magical traditions. This work summarizes her life and work, presenting to us her poetic itinerary. In Loba di Prima deals with mythical figures from the native American mythology to the heroes of Western medieval romances (from Tristan and Iseult to Guinevere), to the figures of the Judeo-Christian religion in The Seven Joys of the Virgin, to the acclamations to Lilith, to the personal re-creation of the myths of classical antiquity (such as Persephone, Ariadne, Helen, et al.), to the saga of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, and finally to the hymns in honor of the Goddess Kali. Loba lives her own eclectic myth and encourages all of us to create our own magical reality. The superiority of the Female Principle permeates the whole volume, as openly declared in one of the Inanna poems: "The king is expendable, but not the Queen." Di Prima has evolved from a poetry that was essentially a poetry of protest and denunciation to a poetry that is meditation in motion, and that includes, comforts, teaches and soothes, rather than confronts. The style is fresh, crisp, and abounds with startling and powerful images. But there is a new, hieratic, classical tone in many of the poems in this volume. The volume is replete with teachings, reflections and musings on life that di Prima wants to share with her readers, and that come forth as brief and powerful aphorisms, as in the first verse of poem "He Who Was Not Born from a Lotus": "It is the Word that is the Ground of Love. . ." In many poems, di Prima speaks like a Hermes-like messenger come down to speak to men: "I come to speak of the long & slender vase / of the goblet like a sphere laid open / of the vessel with two handles, the one with none. . ." The epic properly ends with a poem entitled "Persephone: Reprise", a poem about severance and rebirth. Every great poem is a descent to what di Prima calls "the fluid boundaries of Hades," from which "we spring continuously into life & death." It is apparent that under the persona of Loba, the poet is talking about herself, the woman "with broom and pen," describing herself in a remarkably objective way, as if she were on the outside, looking at herself: "There is a woman who is full of grace / her lap is ample & empty / she is not abstract or sheepish / ... I warmly recommend this volume as one of the most important books of poetry of the twentieth century.

A Reader from Berkeley, CA

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Depth and richness, weaving present and past
Review: I had the privilige of hearing Diane Di Prima read recently, and discovered a new found appreciation for this collection. Many of her volumes have been published as a smaller collection previously, and then expanded to include the later works. 'Loba' is an amazingly, deceptively layered collection weaving together many themes and images over a length of her life. I highly recommend this, among others!

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