Roots & Branches

Revolutionary Letters by Diane Di Prima

City Lights Books, 80 pp.

$2.00 (paper).

Revolutionary Letters belongs to what Frantz Fanón calls "a fighting literature, a revolutionary literature, and a national literature." These poems are all these things, for they are the cultural manifestation of the rising consciousness of a new people. While Fanon was describing a phase of consciousness within the colonized countries of the Third World, the social basis of RL is the conflict of two opposing world views within American life. Often Di Prima presents this struggle in terms of an antithesis between nature and western civilization, for in her particular world view people are the innocent victims of corrupt institutions. But this vision of life is more accurately a commitment, as she comes close to shouting it out:

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER 36

who is the we, who is

the they in this thing, did

we or they kill the indians, not me

my people brought here, cheap

labor to exploit

a continent for them, did we

or they exploit it? do you

admit complicity, say 'we

have to get out of Vietnam, we really should

stop poisoning the water, etc. ' look closer, look again,

secede, declare your independence, don't accept

a share of the guilt they want to lay on us

People are INNOCENT & BEAUTIFUL & born

to perfect bliss they envy, heavy deeds

make heavy hearts and to them

life is suffering stand clear

When this vision comes into conflict with social reality, Di Prima sometimes does not offer real resolution. For the problems of land reform and property ownership she offers the romantic advice:

the american indians say that a man

can own no more than he can carry away

on his horse.

But often the advice is sound: we should be--

killing

the white man in each of us,

killing the desire

for brocade, for gold, for champagne brandy, which sends

people out of the sun and

out of their lives

to create

COMMODITY for our pleasure, what claim

do we have, can we make, on another's time, another's life blood.

At times her vision is a source of pain, for one must pay, must sacrifice to hold such ideals in this world:

I follow

Mother, Sara-la-Kali, sacred Diana, I could have bourne

a babe to our sovereign god but would not

in this captivity, this blood

on my hands.

But always the social basis of her vision and commitment is objective, free of fantasy: we are a people whose lives are a repudiation and refutation of a competitive, profit-seeking society which holds that the true state of people is constant struggle. -- Gary Brown.

Revolutionary Letter 10

These are transitional years and the dues will be heavy.

Change is quick but revolution will take a while. America has not even begun as yet.