Author Di Prisco to talk about latest work
Jan. 27 in Montclair
By Lou Fancher
The most honest and best reason given that a prolific writer who first began penning poetry at age 10 abruptly stopped for 20 years during his young adult life is also the simplest: it just happened that way. Appearing Jan. 27 in the Oakland hills at Montclair Village bookstore A Great Good Place for Books (ggpbooks.com/event/MyLastResume), Di Prisco will read from and discuss his new book, “My Last Resume: New and Collected Poems: 1971-1980/1999-2023.” The answer as to what jolted his pen back into poetry could stop at his initial response during an interview. “It just did, I don’t really know why,” he said. Of course, a more complete answer is full of drama, exploits, excesses, humor, tears, tumult, tenderness and occupations such as managing restaurants and wine businesses or playing and winning high-stakes blackjack competitions worldwide. These stories and others — such as his father’s life as a small-time mobster who fled to California to escape the FBI — are told in Di Prisco’s best-selling memoirs “Subway to California” and “The Pope of Brooklyn.” Intermingled with writing are years spent earning a doctorate at UC Berkeley with a dissertation on Mark Twain; chairing nonprofits focused on supporting art, theater, children’s mental health and education; teaching at numerous locations and founding the New Literary Project in 2015. That well-established organization supports early- and midcareer fiction writers and is heralded in the industry for awarding the annual $50,000 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Di Prisco and his associates also lead free Simpson Writing Workshops for teenage writers at places such as Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall and Girls Inc. Alameda County. The workshops are taught by graduate student Simpson Fellows and creative writing teachers from UC Berkeley’s English Department and St. Mary’s College in Moraga. The Simpson project extends to Jack Hazard Fellowships, awards granted during summer months to creative writers who teach high school. “People should know we also throw very big parties,” Di Prisco says. “Why is that important? I get nervous when people ‘churchify’ literature because these are stories, organic responses to challenges and momentary joys in everybody’s life. That’s what a poem should be. If you don’t like a poem, it’s probably because the poet failed you. I’m for democratized literature, unleashing artistic power, spreading the gospel of ‘write your heart out.’ ” During the years he didn’t write poetry, Di Prisco wrote books about the paths he took, some fruitful, others disastrous, and admits, “I wandered and never lost the hope that someday poems would return to me. It just clicked one day. My health got better; I stopped making the disastrous choices guys make in their 20s and 30s; found more stability in my personal life; and survived.” Poets who are explainers and tell you about feelings and the sky, butterflies or political movements aren’t his shtick. “When a poem works, it’s an experience unto itself,” he said. “A novel is like starting a business, with plot, characters, things to martial. A memoir is about telling the truth as much as you can. “A poem is a concentration of language, experience and intensity. It’s a mini-play, with a voice, conflict, desire for something missing and humor. I’d do anything for a joke with humor, sadness and absurdity in a poem.” Di Prisco insists his poems are not autobiographical, except for when they are. While discussing three very different poems — his “poem in which he devours the white wolf,” his “Report From Couple’s Counseling” and “Write What You Know” — he said he’s intrigued and somewhat surprised to discover connective threads between the poems and what he calls the multiplicity of cells that constitute his and every person’s body and mind. He said he wrote the first poem above during a psychoanalytic phase when he was reading a lot of Freud. “All that white wolf business is one of his case studies. What I got out of that was stuff about projection, introspection, misplaced sexuality, violence and subconscious motivation.” Di Prisco said that in “Report from Couple’s Counseling” there’s wildness he believes exists in any worthwhile relationship that underpins the words, like a subconscious whisper. He said “Write What You Know” at first is “just silliness” and, as a creative writing teacher, a trope he tries to get students to avoid. Instead, he said he encourages them to “write what you want to know, write for the right questions. I’ll use highfalutin terminology and say poems should induce a state of reverie, like in a dream where you experience connections you’ve sublimated. Great poems replicate those associations.” Di Prisco concluded that the poem, about the death of a friend who comes back to life in a way that’s upsetting and affirming, “was the hardest to write because it’s more autobiographical than other poems.” Di Prisco thought about using “It Has Come to My Attention,” as the title of his new book, which he said “has a lot of things I care about — shoes, hiking; someone’s in love; someone’s looking for something. There’s domestic tension operating under the surface.” Another of his poems, “Being At Home In You,” opened up something he’d never found before. “It’s an X-rated poem about building. When something came with this kind of structure I thought, ‘Maybe this is what I am and the kind of poem I want to write.’ There’s tragedy but also hilarity. It’s the poem that’s closest to my heart.” Suggesting that because poetry offers something primal, foundational and mysterious, he said the recent COVID-19 pandemic that “rocked everyone to their roots” caused poetry to “be having its moment.” Even so, he applies high standards and insists a good poem always “brings you in and has a distinctive voice that tells you something in a way you’ve never experienced before.” When considering today’s wars, dysfunctional schools, imperialistic movements, corruption and feeling the futility of it all, he said he sometimes wonders if turning his attention to poetry is escapist, then decides it doesn’t matter. “I hope I’m not being escapist, but yeah, I believe poetry can save us, or at least make us a better country.” |