Diane di Prima, who died in October 2020: “Saw the role of the poet in modern times to be the creation of a visionary poetics rooted in the hidden spiritual traditions which may rejuvenate and bring humans to a higher state of love, joy, community, and awarness.” So concludes David Stephen Calonne in his brilliant book Diane di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Traditions.
David Stephen Calonne is senior lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University. Author of several works, including R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self; William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being; The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats and biographies of Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller. Calonne is also editor of five volumes of uncollected Bukowski stories and essays as well as Conversations with Gary Snyder and Conversations with Allen Ginsberg, both published by University Press of Mississippi.