A Dialogue Between Gary Snyder and Diane di Prima

Although we have mentioned a few women that were Beat writers, overall the group was predominantly male. The Beat poets addressed many issues of society including slavery, consumerism, and even becoming more ecologically conscious. They did not write much about feminism. One of Gary Snyder’s poems, “Praise for Sick Women,” even has underlying misogyny. Diane di Prima wrote an ironic response to this poem (“The Practice of Magical Evolution”).

Gary Snyder “Praise for Sick Women”

I

The female is fertile, and discipline

(contra naturam) only confuses her

Who has, head held sideways

Arm out softly, touching,

A difficult dance to do, but not in mind.

Hand on sleeve: she holds leaf turning in sunlight on spiderweb;

Makes him flick like trout through shallows

Builds into ducks and cold marshes

Sucks out the quiet: bone rushes in

Behind the cool pupil a knot grows

Sudden roots sod him and solid him

Rain falls from skull-roof mouth is awash with small creeks

Hair grows, tongue tenses out – and she

Quick turn of the head: back glancing, one hand

Fingers smoothing the thigh, and he sees.

II

Apples will sour at your sight.

Blossoms fail the bough,

Soil turn bone-white: wet rice

Dry rice, die on the hillslope

All women are wounded

Who gather berries, dibble in mottled light,

Turn white roots from humus, crack nuts on stone

High upland with squinted eye or rest in cedar shade.

Are wounded

In yurt or frame or mothers

Shopping at the outskirts in fresh clothes.

Whose sick eye bleeds the land,

Fast it! Thick throat shields from evil, you young girls

First caught with the gut-cramp

Gather punk wood and sour leaf

Keep out of our kitchen.

Your garden plots, your bright fabrics,

Clever ways to carry children

Hide

A beauty like season or tide, sea cries

Sick women

Dreaming of long-legged dancing in light

No, our Mother Eve: slung on a shoulder

Lugged off to hell.

Kali/shakti

Where’s hell then?

In the moon

In the change of the moon:

In a bark shack

Crouched from sun, five days,

Blood dripping through crusted thighs.

Diane Di Prima "The Practice of Magical Evolution"

The female is fertile,
and discipline (contra naturam) only confuses her

- Gary Snyder

i am a woman and my poems

are woman’s: easy to say

this: the female is ductile

and

(stroke after stroke)

built for masochistic

calm. The deadened nerve

is part of it:

awakened sex, dead retina

fish eyes; at hair’s root

minimal feeling

and pelvic architecture functional

assailed inside & out

(bring forth) the cunt gets wide

and relatively sloppy

bring forth men children only

female

is

ductile

woman, a veil thru which the fingering Will

twice torn

twice tor

inside & out

the flow

what rhythm add to stillness

what applause ?