28/10/2020
In Search of Bohemia | The Village Voice
All hail the Queen of Bohemia, Diane di Prima (1934-2020).
From an article first published in The Village Voice in 1992, and republished this week in honor of di Prima:
"To be part of the art netherworld then was to be part of something suspect, outré, and perhaps even illegal. Moorman’s arrest was no anomaly. In 1961, postal inspectors busted LeRoi Jones and Diane di Prima for sending obscenity through the mail — their literary magazine, Floating Bear. (A grand jury failed to return indictments.)"
For 150 years, the demimonde has been a visible part of urban life. But media saturation and multicultural reality have dislocated “The Scene.” Bohemia is a state of mind.