College classmates Jack Crimmins and Gregg Lowe were reminiscing around the death of Beat poet, Diane diPrima, who once read with Elizabeth Herron in Cotati when Loba was first published. At Sonoma State College, 1979-80, we resurrected a defunct reading series, called the Public Poetry Center, where we hosted community readings with local poets paired with luminaries including Michael McClure, whom Jack introduced, Lewis MacAdams, Joanne Kyger and Bobbie Louise Hawkins at the Cotati Cabaret and the Inn of the Beginning.
As Jack and Gregg reminisced, I realized I was quickly being written out of the collective post-narrative, and it was my project. So I did a diPrima, I chimed in, and reclaimed the past, and then I realized I’ve never properly documented the project, as I was living in the moment producing events.
I told Jack, Yep, The Public Poetry Center, the idea, or concept was to bridge the gap between the writer community and the isolated university. I wasn’t entirely happy with the name, I think it was something my professor, poet David Bromige had coined, but it stuck, and served its purpose. Before that, there wasn’t much going on at Sonoma State. Jack said he came up with the title.
Our job was to resurrect SSU’s defunct Public Poetry Center and to create a liaison between the university and the community We hosted campus literary and art events for the English Dept., The College of the Humanities and the ASUC InterCultural Center. We also had to negotiate around David Bromige who wanted to present a very different poetry scene.
I began booking readings as an undergraduate art student, after attending The Child in Changing Times Conference in either June of 1978 (I don’t have a notebook for 1978, and so, can’t look it up) and/or another conference in 1979, The Arts in Everyday Living (they could be one and the same conference), that changed my life’s direction. It was hosted by the SSU Dept. of Psychology, coordinated by Terry Doyle, psychologist, and poets Michael Dow and Lee Perron who both taught for an organization that would literally change my life, California Poets in the Schools (CPITS).
The organizers were setting up kiosks with photos of children, and their poetry. I had my calligraphy kit on me and offered to make signs. I was the signmaker for the Sonoma Student Union. Once they saw that I could make huge banners, they roped me in, made me part of the conference.
• Summer Workshop: A conference on developing more effective, loving relationships with children, Growing Up Sane: The Child in Changing Times, will be offered at Sonoma State College from June 22 to 25, 1978. The conference will provide new insights, practical skills and usable methods in raising and educating children. For information call Neil Schifiman, 565-9280.
That conference is also how I got roped into both the Russian River Writers’ Guild, and CPITS at the same time, via poet Lee Perron. Anyway, by circumstance, or by accident, I became the default student liaison between the university and the Russian River Writers’ Guild. The Cotati Cabaret was off campus, and it drew much large crowds. (Besides, there was booze). The other tenant was that we always paid the poets, no matter no small the stipend was....
The Arts in Everyday Living: The Real Basis of Education Conference, 28 June - 1 July, sponsored by Sonoma State University, Office of Extended Education. The workshops and an ongoing art project are geared toward teachers, parents, administrators, artists, counselors and community members. Kenneth Rexroth, poet and critic, and Jose Arguellos, educator, artist and writer will be the featured main speakers. Also included are an Arts Festival and Resource Center. For further information, contact the Office of Extended Education at SSU, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928 or call (707)664-2394.
Ultimately that Arts in Everyday Living conference was where I was first exposed to accessible personal narrative poetry that even kids could write. Hooked, I took to the streets running: I undertook the equivalent of a second BA in Expressive Arts, a cluster school offshoot of the psychology department, along with my BA in Art Studio (my connection with the English Dept. was a bit of a fluke), and I trained to become a poet-teacher for California Poets in the Schools.
CPITS Area Coordinator for SoNapa counties, (we called it SOCPITS) Michael Dow’s writing workshops were vitally alive and I wanted more, but I was also simultaneously taking poetry workshops with David Bromige, so to ameliorate the schism, I created a bridge of sorts between the three groups to make sense of it all. It was an octopuses eight-handed nightmare, as I didn’t quite fit in anywhere. Besides, I was an art student.
Without poetry I never would’ve gone back to school as I had dropped out of SFSU, and was floundering around at Sonoma State trying to finish my BA degree in Art Studio at a school where few art classes were being offered. Luckily, both David Bromige and Psychology chair, jazz musician, “Red” Thomas became my SSU liaisons. But the English/poetry department and the Expressive Arts department, even though it was a cluster school, were not connected at the hip, or anywhere at all. So that was yet another matchstick bridge to build. When I landed in Expressive Arts, I felt I had finally come home.
“Red” Thomas, more than anyone, gave me belief in myself and lent credence to what I was doing, even if I hadn’t a clue as to what it was. He gave me blanket permission to “follow my passion.” What stayed with me were those weekly seminars, group meetings when we had to report back to our peers our successes and failures. I was always so terrified but poetry was this large brontosaurus rucking round the room, I was merely holding on for dear life. Even tho I wasn’t officially in the program, I joined in. It was like a 12-step program for enabling artists and poets in their communities. “Red” Thomas and Mac McCreary were at the epicenter of change.
And because we didn’t know any better, we all dreamed big, and that’s how Diane Di Prima came to SSU to give a workshop and a reading—either in the fall of 1979, or the spring of 1980. Her exploration, and navigation of the feminine archetype as a she-wolf, a hunter of lost things, became my mantra. Her epistolary manifestos in Revolutionary Letters gave us permission to address the universe not just as participants, but as activist poets on the cusp of change.
Some say that she wrote Loba as a counterpoint to Ginsberg’s Howl. None of that matters. She was a woman before her time, and she ran with the wolves long before it was a concept. I took workshops with her in June, 1979, at the SF Zen Center, a converted Victorian flat. Her open narrative process allowed us to generate our own major arcana of mythos and symbolism unimpeded by the tight corners of male-dominated academia.
Another college classmate, Rebecca Clintron reminisced, Diane was palpable, she was elegant Wildness itself bringing 'Loba' workshop to us almost immediately upon publication, fresh and clear w a subdued gravitas. what i recall most poignantly was her speaking of the 'vulnerability of youth' (our ignorance and openness) was nothing compared to the vulnerability of an aging woman in our culture, approaching cronehood. i recognize now that she was barely into middle age!”
Jack answered, “ Rebecca, very cool, your recollections of Diane...thank you..."Wildness"...! Diane's book "Loba" such an important cross-cultural, mythopoetic long poem, written over years, added to as she went, and as Diane said, as she heard the poem voices emerging, a poem that powerfully explores feminine consciousness and beyond...so cool Diane was out teaching early and throughout her life.”
There is a woman whose poems are bread & meat
hyacinth nightmare crepe paper
I close a window, she is not reflected in it
but I see her silhouette against the glass
she is crisp as ice, is soft
as russian vowels”
—Diane diPrima, Loba
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| From Altar, Diane diPrima's workshop, SF Zen Center, June 1979. |
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| From the Naropa broadsides 1974 |
