“The only war is the war against the imagination.”
― Diane di Prima
I first discovered Diane di Prima when a friend loaned me a book about the women of the beat poetry movement. I knew there had to be some women as counterpoint to Allan Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski and my beloved Jack Kerouac.
This year I discovered another connection.
While the men of the beat generation have mostly died long ago, at eighty-years-old Diane is still with us. Like my mother, however, she now has Parkinson’s disease. I pray I haven’t missed my last opportunity to experience her in person. Her most recent collection of poetry, The Poetry Deal, was published in 2014. I need to at least purchase several copies of it in honor to the woman she is and will continue to be.
I love these quotes she gave in a 2014 interview with Josh Rankin of SFGate.
“My mantras are: ‘Keep making art’ and ‘If you make a big mistake, forgive yourself.’ I don’t try to make anything into something other than what it is. The world is perfect as it is. You are perfect as you are, though you have to get back to work to reactivate that perfection.”
Questions for Writing (and other) Contemplation:
What will you do today and this week to reactivate your perfection (as Diane di Prima explains it.)?
What do you do in your war with imagination? How would you describe your relationship with imagination?
Sentence Starters:
My mantras are….
I’ve forgiven myself for….
My imagination is fueled by….
I need to forgive myself for….
Day in review (to be written after today is almost over)
Today my imagination surprised me by…
I am glad to report I continued to….
I wish I had spent more time doing….
Tomorrow I intend to….
I will reach out and….
= = = =
This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.
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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in Spring, 2015 and beyond.
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