Abstract
The last three decades have witnessed a significant increase in the academic interest in the Beat Generation. No longer seen as “know-nothing bohemians” (Podhoretz 1958), scholars have extended the scope of Beat studies, either by generating renewed interest in canonical authors, by expanding the understanding of what Beat means, or by broadening the aesthetic or theoretical lens through which we read Beat writers and poets. Among these, the transnational perspective on Beat writing has sparked careful re-examinations of Beat authors and their works that seek to recognize, among other things, the impact that transnational cultures and literatures have had on Beat writers. Diane di Prima’s long poem Loba (Di Prima 1998), a feminist epic the poet started writing in the early 1970s, draws on a vast array of transnational texts and influences. Most notoriously, di Prima works with mythological and religious texts to revise and challenge the representation of women throughout history. This paper explores di Prima’s particular use of world narratives in light of a feminist poetics and politics of revision. Through the example of “Eve” and the “Virgin Mary”, two of the many female characters whose textual representation is challenged in Loba, the first part of the paper considers di Prima’s use of gnostic and Christian discourses and their impact on her feminist politics of revision. The second part of the paper situates Loba in the specific context of Second-Wave feminism and the rise of Goddess Movement feminist groups. Drawing from the previous analysis, this part reevaluates di Prima’s collection in light of the essentialist debate that analyzes the texts arising from this tradition as naïve and apolitical.
Highlights
The last three decades have witnessed a significant increase in the academic interest in the Beat Generation
Much has changed since Beat writers and poets were criticized on the grounds of an alleged lack of intellectual depth sustained by either a laid-back laziness or a system-directed violence (Podhoretz 1958; O’Neil 1959)
Such an ill-informed view was somewhat endorsed over the years by the mainstream media through its perpetuation of the shallow Beatnik, and by the academia, which for decades hindered the inclusion of Beat Studies as a serious field of research1, this trend has been shifting progressively
Summary
Much has changed since Beat writers and poets were criticized on the grounds of an alleged lack of intellectual depth sustained by either a laid-back laziness or a system-directed violence (Podhoretz 1958; O’Neil 1959). While Thomson (2011) concentrates on bodily representations of femininity in Loba, Quinn (2012) uses Hélenè Cixous’s writings as a framework to examine di Prima’s radical This trend is still relevant and recent works with clear transnational approaches include Jimmy Fazzino’s World Beats: Beat. Beat women, who have themselves been absorbed by the mostly-debunked myth of a closed, white, and masculine, Beat Generation, naturally felt attracted to the embodied qualities of myths, gladly accepting the invitation to use their poetry to rewrite mythological texts, but any other kind of discourse that has been used to perpetuate the subordination of women in socio-political or artistic realms Works such as Joanne Kyger’s Descartes (Kyger 1968) or The Tapestry and the Web (Kyger 1965), and, more recently, Anne Waldman’s The Iovis Trilogy (Waldman 2011). In the context of a collection written at the zenith of feminist revolt, di Prima’s interpretation of Christian and Gnostic texts illuminate the poet’s overall connection with feminism, especially in the context of Second-Wave feminism and Goddess-movement, a trend that is often criticized as essentialist and apolitical
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