Loba

by Diane di Prima

(1998)

   It took diane di prima 28 years to determine that her master work, Loba, is about “the feralness of the core of women, of the feminine in everything, in everyone.” The collection of 205 oracular and mysterious poems, titled for the Spanish word meaning “she-wolf,” uses Navajo wolf mythology to represent female and feminine consciousness over thousands of year. Through the trope of loba in the form of the Virgin Mary, Lillith, Kali-Ma, Shiva, a bag lady, a young woman dancing at a bar, and many others both secular and spiritual, di Prima reveals the process by which all humans—innately artists—create themselves. Book I was published in 1978 by Wingbow Press, and Books I and II were published in 1998 by Penguin.

   Di Prima began the poem in the early 1970s, using a process that she describes the intuitive “receiving” of “broadcasts” that she then records. As she worked on the collection making visual collages of images of women, wild animals, and strange scenery, individual poems emerged through the juxtaposition of forms. These images and words eventually coalesced into a portrait of female and feminine power symbolized by the wolf. In method and content, Loba exemplifies many of the passions in di Prima’s life, especially the poetry of John Keats, the alchemical and hermetic arts, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, the blues and jazz, autobiographies and memoirs, motherhood, the female body, and world mythologies.

   The style relies upon short imagistic lines balanced with longer prose lines, vernacular language mixed with the esoteric, playful use of the page as canvas, shorthand such as & and yr, and quick dancelike rhythms modulated with slow dreamlike rhythms. Book I deals with the physical and sexual life of a woman and Book II with the soul. The collection epitomizes a postmodern form called a rhizome—a nonlinear text with multiple sites of entry and exit. Loba testifies to an essentialist philosophy that characterizes second-wave feminism: recognition and celebration of an essential “femaleness” at the core of all women. One argument that Loba makes vociferously is that female power has remained steadfast throughout history and that every woman possesses the ability to tap this common essence:

   were it not for the ring of fur

   around her ankles

   just over her bobby socks

   there’s no one

   wd ever guess her name. . . .

   While this argument has great value, contemporary psychological and sociological identity research has shown that race, class, ethnicity, relationships, and individual biochemistry complicate the formation of self. Di Prima’s essentialist perspective is mitigated somewhat by the integration of poems that represent critical reviews of Loba, poets’ and painters’ renderings of loba, and male-centered visions such as the “Tahuti Poems” that portray the lover of Isis in Egyptian mythology. These decenter the concept of the essential female nature, lending credence to di Prima’s statement that Loba is about the wildness in all humans.

   Di Prima continues to work on Book III of Loba, which focuses on the journey of the spirit.

 Bibliography

■ di Prima, Diane. “The Tapestry of Possibility” (Interview). Whole Earth. (Fall 1999) http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GER/is_1999_Fall/ai_56457596.

■ Foley, Jack. “Diane di Prima.” Poetry Previews. Available online. URL: http://www.poetrypreviews.com/poets/poet-diprima.html. Accessed May 5, 2005.

■ Libby, Anthony. “Diane di Prima: ‘Nothing Is Lost; It Shines In Our Eyes.’ ” In Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation, edited by Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M. Grace, 45–68. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

   Nancy M. Grace