Diane Di Prima: The Dark Beauty Of Beat Poetry. Part II.

Part II

When the Beats hit the American scene in the l950's, Poetry was still rolling in the watery remanents of the Romantic era of the early 1900's. The ravages of World War I and the death of illusion with-in the boundaries of aesthetics and love had become buried in the sway of modernism. Such beauty and prowess that lay beneath the cold and barren confines of the Victorian era had died by poison gas. It became more and more difficult for poets to sing odes to the beauty of naturalism, when so many beautiful young men rested in death in the fields of Europe. T.S. Elliot may have served to bridge the post-romantic world into the modern with his poem, "The Waste Land", but it was the beats who carried that voice into the next century, placing Romanticism on the shelves of antiquity. Those swells from an earlier era in literature were still rising with these tides of change, and American literature had sunken into those depths, submerged in the bottom of that beauty. An aura of illusion reigned unconquered. Some sense of reality needed to be restored. One of the main contributions of the beats was to break down the walls of unreality surrounding poetry and to replace it with a sense of honesty and integrity. Another was to replace the seriousness of the Romantic, at times over-dramatic, with laughter; helping to give literature more of a sense of humor, while at the same time, emphasizing these undertones with-in the social ills hidden in American society. They wrote of revolution and meant it through their actions. They spoke of issues that had been ignored through ignorance, fear, and persuasion. No other beat writer exemplifies this inherent honesty than Diane Di Prima. Her direct honesty in dealing with sexual issues, political issues, and the random pursuit of pleasure cannot be understated or ignored. In "Pieces Of A Song", a sort of literary anthology, her blunt manner of telling the truth surfaces in "No Problem Party Poem." Again, it is the timing and rhythm of the poem mixed with its' frankness that keep the poem from drifting into another lost regressive poem. Another aspect that characterizes a Di Prima poem is her ability to use one word or phrase with constant use of a repetitive manner to add strength to the tone of the poem.

first glass broken on patio no problem forgotten sour cream for vegetables no problem cups arriving to watch belly dancer no problem absence of more beer no problem

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