Coming To Terms With Impermanence
Diane di Prima came of age just prior to the 1960's and 1970's - eras that ushered new ways of thinking about life, family, culture, and self into mainstream conscience. But before the Summer of Love and any of the later political and cultural movements, a smaller and less deliberate group sought lives for themselves beyond the repressive social codes of the 1950's. Restless, the loose collection of writers, artists and writers that grew to be known as the Beats challenged established norms through simple choices about their lives. Where they lived. How and who they loved. What they wrote, and what they did with that writing. These small personal decisions resonated on a larger scale, and 1950s New York soon came to be known as the New Bohemia, with an electrifying art, poetry, and music scene centered in Greenwich Village.
Many of the Beats acknowledge a long international history of writers and other artists that inspired and informed them. In America, this small eclectic community grew from a relatively small group of committed artists, to a magnetic presence, attracting young people from across the country. The scene grew as these young people adopted the “beatnik” persona and lifestyle. Despite the image that developed, the core of this movement – of which di Prima was an important part – was in its writers and their works. Writing “the speech of the streets,” they were shunned by established publishers and galleries. As the Vietnam War heated up, many were regarded as long-haired draft-dodgers. Years later, the influence of Beat writing on literature and popular culture is undeniable, but at the time, they were all each other had –writing and producing mainly for their chosen community. Intentional or otherwise, the Beat scene created shock waves that set the groundwork for feminist, anti-war, civil liberties, and ecological movements that followed – and changed established notions about poetry and literature.
Widely regarded as the most prominent woman writer of the Beat Generation, Diane di Prima was an integral part of this scene. She founded poetry presses and literary journals. She started theatres that took poetry and literature into the streets. And she wrote and published, beginning a body of work that today numbers more than 40 books of poetry and prose.
In her early teens, di Prima fell in love with the poets. Her ideas about her future are reflected in her 1951 high school yearbook goal - to be a "mad genius and 15 kids in a garret full of poetry." She began writing "Nulla dies sine linea" on all of her notebooks. Translated from Latin, "No day without a line" was her way of life.
Winning a scholarship to Swarthmore College, di Prima soon realized she couldn’t write there. She left school and moved to the Village, and became involved in its growing artistic community. Over the next several years di Prima became deeply involved in the literary scene. She also had children, lovers, friends, and husbands. After years in New York – and a few visits to the West Coast - di Prima decided to head west. Living first outside Los Angeles and then moving to Northern California, di Prima became involved with revolutionary political groups. She lived in communes in the Haight Ashbury and Northern California, participated in the Summer of Love, and was a member of the Diggers.
Along the way, di Prima wrote thousands of poems, kept elaborate and delicately crafted chapbooks, took part in experimental films, radio shows, poetry festivals, panels, and conferences. Both a personal story and poetic experience, Coming to Terms With Impermanence mixes anecdotes and reflections from di Prima, longtime friends, and younger writers with whom she has worked with impressionistic Super8 and 16mm scenes. Cut to di Prima’s words, these scenes elaborate moods, and suggest dreams and the somewhat reliable and highly emotional state of memories. Collage-like, the film also shows her chapbooks, personal photos, first drafts of manuscripts, and dozens of poems. Coming to Terms with Impermanence is a tour through the times and places that were di Prima’s surroundings – the grimy Village in the 50’s, the vistas of San Francisco, Point Reyes seashore, a commune in Northern California, her childhood home in Brooklyn.
Coming to Terms with Impermanence is the first film exclusively about di Prima. It presents a never before seen portrait of a highly unique, classically educated, raw, powerful, and visionary literary voice.