Diane Di Prima, Denise Levertov, Nikki Giovanni, & More Protest Poets to Read Now

We know you're all headed to AWP to lobby congress, save the NEA, thank the Library of Congress staffers held over from the Obama admin, protest in candlelight, and read poems in Senate doorways, so here are five poets you must, must bring along. From The Conversation: "Back in the liberal-compared-to-now days of the Ronald Reagan administration, a rapper named Brother D released a single that asked the question: “How we gonna make the black nation rise?” His answer – “agitate, educate, and organise” – if prescient then, seems overwhelmingly important now." We'll give you a heads-up, with our Lady Di Prima at number 3:

3. Diane Di Prima

Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters (1971) is one of the most powerful and thorough explorations ever written into the ways in which a poet can act to change the culture. Confident without being bombastic, confrontational and also compassionate, ecstatic as well as desperate, Di Prima brings the revolution home by initiating the change from home.

Kids, lovers, friends and opponents are all part of the struggle. One problem that political poets face is the question of how simple sloganeering can also be good poetry. Revolutionary Letters does this through giving the reader a domestic and particular world, written with a Beat poetics, within which is played out a very open and public politics. Revolutionary Letter #50 runs, in full:

As soon as we submit

to a system based on causality, linear time

we submit, again, to the old values, plunge again

into slavery. Be strong. We have the right to make

the universe we dream. No need to fear “science” grovelling

apology for things as they are, ALL POWER

TO JOY. which will remake the world.

Find all of them at The Conversation.