Diane di Prima

 

Diane di Prima
Revolutionary Letters, 1968
Detroit Artists’ Worskshop Press, Detroit

Published in various versions over the years, Diane di Prima’s incendiary Revolutionary Letters were dedicated to Bob Dylan and offered free for reproduction. The radical collective Detroit Artists’ Workshop, founded in 1964 and originally known as the Artists’ Workshop Society, produced this edition. The group was devoted to the vision of a communal, engaged, and non-commercial group of artists, poets, and musicians. The group was inspired, in part, by the poetics of Amiri Baraka (born Leroi Jones), as described in a manifesto by one of the collective’s co-founders, John Sinclair.

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #2

the value of an individual life the credo they taught us
to instill fear, and inaction, ‘you only live once’
a fog in our eyes, we are
endless as the sea, not separate, we die
a million times a day, we are born
a million times, each breath life and death
get up, put on your shoes, get
started, someone else will finish
//
Tribe
an organism, one flesh, breathing joy as the stars
breathe destiny down on us, get
going, join hands, see to business, thousands of sons
will see to it when you fall, you will grow
a thousands times in the bellies of your sisters