Diane di Prima left our plane of existence this past Sunday (25 Oct 2020). I recently came across the attached document in my researches, and wanted to share it with everyone. This is an early printing of Diane’s Revolutionary Letters, soon after she moved to San Francisco in 1968 and joined in Free City. Free City was the Digger project that wove together dozens of communes that had formed out of the Summer of Love.
These are the first fifteen poems of what eventually were sixty-three published by City Lights. This set of fifteen was originally printed by the New York Communication Company which was inspired by the SF Communication Company which itself was inspired by the Diggers. The NY Com/Co publication of the Revolutionary Letters was then reprinted widely in the underground press (such as the attached excerpt from the underground literary journal Quixote, thanks to Independent Voices).
In Revolutionary Letter #11, Diane mentions going on a free food run with Kirby Doyle to supply the Free City Convention which was held at the Carousel Ballroom on May 1, 1968. This was one of the Digger events that inspired the Sutter Street Commune to set up the Free Print Shop and start publishing the inter-communal newsletter Kaliflower the following year.
These poems seem eerily reminiscent of the present as our democracy is under attack by many of the forces that Diane foresaw half a century ago.
Madeleine Stern’s quote about the the Prince of Serendip (one of the Praxis passages on the Digger web site) came true this fall. The COVID pandemic has been conducive for uncovering missing sources, apparently. I was looking through boxes of ephemera that had not yet been scanned, one of which was Freeman House’s archive that he donated in 1980. One sheet caught my eye, titled “term paper.” Perhaps because it wasn’t signed “Diggers” I had not paid it close attention before. But the first sentence jumped off the page:
the relationship between poetry and revolution has lost its ambiguity—gregory corso’s poem POWER was the sole reason behind the concept of the Diggers: autonomy.
—”term paper” (Digger street sheet, 1966-7)
I immediately looked for Gregory Corso’s poem POWER. Peter Berg referred to one of Corso’s plays in a remembrance of Gregory on the Planet Drum web site:
It was easy to feel brotherly toward Gregory. I knew his Gasoline poems and some others, and was especially impressed by a one-act play titled Standing on a Street Corner. It exuded the spirit of a wise clown epitomized in the line, “Standing on a street corner doing nothing is power.” I used the script in a weekly play study class in my Haight-Ashbury apartment for fellow San Francisco Mime Troupers. It helped inspire the concept of guerrilla theater that was incubating then for future pieces performed in Sproul Plaza during teach-ins, at a bus station, and on actual street corners.
But “term paper” didn’t say “one-act play”—it specifically said “poem.”
Then, this past month, my communal zoom group suggested that I give one of our weekly presentations on “The Life & Times of Irving Rosenthal (to 1971)” to uncover the hidden connections in the lives of anyone who was influenced by the Kaliflower network (comprising the hundreds of communes in the SF Bay Area in the 1960/1970s).
In researching the presentation, I came across a most interesting reference. In early 1959, Irving Rosenthal was putting the final touches on Big Table 1, the literary journal that he founded with Paul Carroll to publish the Beat writings that the University of Chicago had banned after the Chicago Review scandal in late 1958 (Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, Old Angel Midnight by Jack Kerouac). Rosenthal wrote to Allen Ginsberg that he had decided to add three poems Gregory Corso had just sent him: “Power (for Allen Ginsberg)”; “Army”; and, “Police.”
So here then was the missing link. Corso’s poem “POWER” (in all caps, just as the Digger sheet titled it likewise) was published in Big Table 1 in March 1959. It became the inspiration for Digger autonomy. And notice the slight shift in wording from Corso’s play that Berg referenced. See images below of both items that were uncovered.
“term paper” Digger street sheet (1966-67):
“POWER (for Allen Ginsberg)” excerpt from Big Table 1
“Standing on a street corner waiting for no one is Power”—the missing link between the Beats and the Diggers.
digger feed: dinosaurs are dancing 