Beat It

November 7, 2015August 1, 2009 by Diane di Prima

First is honored to publish poems by Diane di Prima (who has just been named Poet Laureate of San Francisco).

A GOOD DAY TO

it is with my whole heart open
no pain in it

I celebrate

lost brothers & sisters — what joy!

we lived

riding war ponies

straight into the sun

REALITY IS NO OBSTACLE

refuse to obey
refuse to sleep
refuse to turn away
refuse to close your eyes
refuse to shut your ears
refuse silence when you can still sing
refuse discourse in lieu of embracement
come to no end that is not
a Beginning

FIRST DRAFT: POET LAUREATE OATH OF OFFICE
for all poets everywhere

It is the poem I serve
luminous, through time
that celebration
of human breath, of melos

it is and always has been
the muse…androgynous and ruthless
as any angel…scattering words…that need no
radio frequency…no broadband

it is the light on the ocean here and
the sky…in all its moods
luminous fog that wakes me up
to write, and something I call the
“Imp of the Short Poem”

it is the people of San Francisco
in their beauty
Bright luminous eyes…looking out
from homeless faces

looking up
from gardening…skateboarding…singing
playing cards…playing ball
barbecuing in their backyards

the folks in the Mission
the Excelsior…in Bayview
Hunters Point
Japantown
North Beach
folks in the Sunset
working & idle
passionate…angry…silent
powerful in their silence

my friends and neighbors
parked at Ocean Beach, at Twin Peaks
in their cars
watching the sun go

down

my vow is:

remind us all
to celebrate
there is no time
too desperate
no season
that is not
a Season of Song

Order from Dottir Press here.

“Laurie Stone’s Streaming Now is a book of journal-like entries, scraps of critical pieces, bits of memoir, and it is a delight. She calls these fragments postcards, which is charming and accurate up to a point, but the writing is better than any postcard you ever got unless you got one from Laurie Stone and she wrote it really small so all the wit and all the passing contemplations could fit. She writes about life during COVID, at home with ‘the man I live with’; about old friends and glancing love affairs; about books and films and television shows, with a deeply appealing combination of spitfire skepticism and a constant openness to pleasure and joy. One is reminded in multiple ways during the reading that Stone came of age and was politically, intellectually and emotionally shaped by the struggles and commitments of second wave feminism, and we’re further reminded that for feminists like Stone the movement was not only about rights, and not at all about protections for women, but about freedom for women, a much more dangerous thing, for women and for society at large. Freedom is a long lost idea. It had a specific erotic push and was battled back as eroticism always is. Autocracies are always puritanical. Everything about Stone’s writing is oriented toward freedom and much of her linguistic and literary sensibility specifically evokes erotic and intellectual freedom–the very sound of the sentences, their surprises, the quick adoption of new positions in relation to the thing looked at and engaged with. So, one recognizes that a simple seeming book of pensées is really the exploration of a distinct and valuable cultural point of view. We are lucky to have it.” –Vince Passaro, author of the novels Crazy Sorrow, and Violence, Nudity, Adult Content

Alison Stone’s New Book Available for Pre-Order!

From immigrants to insurrectionists, from Demeter to David Bowie, Stone gives us searing, moving poems filled with powerful imagery and an original music.

Order your copy at www.stonepoetry.org

Order from Bloomsbury here.

Expeditions to Kafka
Selected Essays
Stanley Corngold (Author)

In this new volume of Kafka studies, which is addressed to both beginning readers of Kafka as well as Kafka scholars, Stanley Corngold discusses Kafka’s work in a variety of novel perspectives, including Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther; Nietzsche’s conception of aphoristic form; bureaucratic organization; accident and risk; the logic of possession and inheritance; and myth, among others.Even as Corngold explores Kafka’s work across different fields and tangents, he does so in vivid, readable prose, free of jargon, and with an eye to Kafka’s ongoing relevance to the concerns of his day and ours. Taken together these linked essays reveal Kafka in his astonishing many-sidedness.

Read an extract here.

Published	Aug 10 2023
Format	Ebook (PDF)
Edition	1st
Extent	336
ISBN	9798765100448
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Reviews

With superb erudition and his inimitable flair, Stanley Corngold’s Expeditions offer a magisterial guide through the intricate and ambiguous terrain of Kafka’s texts. Insights abound, providing a comprehensive and consistently profound investigation that strikes the perfect balance between drawing interpretive conclusions and maintaining hermeneutic openness-a culminating accomplishment by Kafka’s most inspired and most inspiring reader.

John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA

You are not being introduced to Kafka – you fall into his stories as you fall into a trap, the bait emerging in the interstices between his words and your mind. That said, Corngold’s Expeditions are by far the best introduction to Kafka I have seen. He invites you to join him on his ventures into Continent Kafka, and he inspires you to stray off from his expeditions on your own terms, and risk.

Benno Wagner, Professor in German Studies, Siegen University, Germany

Stanley Corngold has been reading, reflecting, and commenting on Kafka and his writings for more than half a century. He has become our most penetrating and luminous guide to Kafka’s labyrinthine world. These essays, the distillate of a lifetime, manage both to reveal and to preserve the mystery of Kafka’s genius.

Robert Norton, Professor of German, University of Notre Dame, USA