correspondence with Pound early on. Ferlinghetti
wrote an introduction to "this kind of bird flies
backwards, Ginsberg helped her technical writing
and spontaneity and with Leroi Jones, she
published "the Floating Bear (1961-69) Hemmer,
2007). Like many beat poets, she developed a
lifelong love of Zen and Buddhism in San
Francisco under Shunryu Suzuki and others.
Oscar Miro-Quesada states that "the first shaman
were all women", Di Prima’s poetry emphasizes
the strength and adaptability that women present
in the face of male adversity. One notable example
of this is her feminist reworking of Snyder's
chauvinist poem "Praise for sick women" As Di
Prima states "disappointment or loss marked the
men of the world…disappointment and silence
marked the women too…But there the silence lay
deeper".
Di Prima as a shaman-poet seeks to envelop this
silence and give voice to the female protagonist
using atavistic myth and archetype. Her Poem
"Loba” is an examination of the female
consciousness and enables her to tackle themes
such as “politics, religion, erotic love and
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