Rant By Diane Di Prima . Read After It Was Mentioned In Let This Radicalize You

rant by diane di prima . read after it was mentioned in Let This Radicalize You

You cannot write a single line w/out a cosmology

a cosmogony

laid out, before all eyes

there is no part of yourself you can separate out

saying, this is memory, this is sensation

this is the work I care about, this is how I

make a living

it is whole, it is a whole, it always was whole

you do not "make" it so

there is nothing to integrate, you are a presence

you are an appendage of the work, the work stems from

hangs from the heaven you create

every man / every woman carries a firmament inside

& the stars in it are not the stars in the sky

w/out imagination there is no memory

w/out imagination there is no sensation

w/out imagination there is no will, desire

history is a living weapon in yr hand

& you have imagined it, it is thus that you

"find out for yourself"

history is the dream of what it can be, it is

the relation between things in a continuum

of imagination

what you find out for yourself is what you select

out of an infinite sea of possibility

no one can inhabit yr world

yet it is not lonely,

the ground of the imagination is fearlessness

discourse is video tape of a movie of a shadow play

but the puppets are in yr hand

your counters in a multidimensional chess

which is divination

& strategy

the war that matters is the war against the imagination

all other wars are subsumned in it.

the ultimate famine is the starvation

of the imagination

it is death to be sure, but the undead

seek to inhabit someone else's world

the ultimate claustrophobia is the syllogism

the ultimate claustrophobia is "it all adds up"

nothing adds up & nothing stands in for

anything else

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST

THE IMAGINATION

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST

THE IMAGINATION

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST

THE IMAGINATION

ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT

There is no way out of the spiritual battle

There is no way to avoid taking sides

There is no way you can not have a poetics

no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher

you do it in the consciousness of making

or not making yr world

you have a poetics: you step into the world

like a suit of readymade clothes

or you etch in light

your firmament spills into the shape of your room

the shape of the poem, of yr body, of yr loves

A woman's life / a man's life is an allegory

Dig it

There is no way out of the spiritual battle

the war is the war against the imagination

you can't sign up as a conscientious objector

the war of the worlds hangs here, right now, in the balance

it is a war for this world, to keep it

a vale of soul-making

the taste in all our mouths is the taste of our power

and it is bitter as death

bring yr self home to yrself, enter the garden

the guy at the gate w/ the flaming sword is yrself

the war is the war for the human imagination

and no one can fight it but you/ & no one can fight it for you

The imagination is not only holy, it is precise

it is not only fierce, it is practical

men die everyday for the lack of it,

it is vast & elegant

intellectus means "light of the mind"

it is not discourse it is not even language

the inner sun

the polis is constellated around the sun

the fire is central