The Poetry Deal

"But when yr eyes shoot sparks & you say/ "Choose between me & it." "It" has always gone." Di Prima (Revolutionary Letters) sealed the deal with poetry at age 14. Collected here are poems that span four decades and speak to the poet's allegiance to her city and her community; lives lost to the 1990s AIDS epidemic; politics; love; motherhood; "a state of mind." In 1968, the Beat performer, human rights activist, and poet laureate of San Francisco from 2009 to 2011, left her native New York and moved permanently to the Bay Area. She would become a revolutionary voice of the people; a self-proclaimed servant of the poem. These mostly spare and lyrical poems invite the reader to "Escape from dry New College lecture" ("Gracias"), give pause to "Memorial Day, 2003," and imagine alternative approaches to "Haiti, Chile, Tibet." We get close to the author's "Acts of Imagination" and feel that poetry is as she says—it can bring joy, cause grief, is song, riddle, dance, is dream and dreamer intertwined, is remaking language in the act of being writ, is so many parts, it's indeed a lot to wrap our minds around.