"Rant, From a Cool Place" Explication

Rant, From a Cool Place by Diane Di Prima

We are in the middle of a bloody, heartrending
revolution Called America, called the Protestant
reformation, called
Western man,
Called individual consciousness, meaning I need a
refrigerator and a car
And milk and meat for the kids so, I can discover
that I don't need a car
Or a refrigerator, or meat, or even milk, just rice
and a place with no wind to sleep next to someone
Two someones keeping warm in the winter
learning to weaveTo pot and to putter, learning to
steal honey from bees,
wearing the bedclothes by day, sleeping under(or
in) them at night; hording bits of glass, colored
stones,
and stringing beads
How long before we come to that blessed
definable stateKnown as buddhahood, primitive
man, people in a landscapetogether like trees, the
second childhood of man

I don't know if I will make it somehow nearer by
saying all thisout loud, for christs sake, that
Stevenson was killed, that
Shastri was killed
both having dined with Marietta Treethe wife of a
higher-up in the CIA
both out of their own countries mysteriously dead,
as how many others

as Marilyn Monroe, wept over in so many tabloids
done in for sleeping with Jack Kennedy - this isn't a poem -
full of cold prosaic fact
thirteen done in the Oswald plot: Jack Ruby's cancer that
disappeared in autopsy
the last of a long line - and they're waiting to get Tim Leary
Bob Dylan
Allen Ginsberg
LeRoi Jones - as, who killed Malcolm X? They give themselves
away
with TV programs on the Third Reich, and I wonder if I'll
live to sit in Peking or Hanoi
see TV programs on LBJ's Reich: our great SS analysed, our money
exposed, the plot to keep Africa
genocide in Southeast Asia now in progress Laos Vietnam
Thailand Cambodia O soft-spoken Sukamo
O great stone Buddhas with sad negroid lips torn down by us by the red
guard all one force
one leveling mad mechanism, grinding it down to earth and
swamp to sea to powder

till Mozart is something a few men can whistle
or play on a homemade flute and we bow to each other
telling old tales half remembered
gathering shells learning again "all beings are from the very beginning Buddhas
or glowing and dying radiation and plague we come to that
final great love illumination
"FROM THE VERY FIRST NOTHING IS."





The speaker of Di Prima’s “Rant, From a Cool Place is someone who is criticizing America and society for the way it conforms to the norm. The speaker refers to Americans and how they are materialistic and think that in life they need possessions when really they don’t. The speakers tone in the poem is serious and critical. The speaker questions him self in the middle of the poem saying that he doesn’t know if he is going to make a different in what he is saying and the points that he is bringing to light. But he decided to continue on after he questions himself and continues to try and get his point across. The speaker then criticizes the government and different modern tragedies and cover-ups such as cover-ups in the CIA and murders such as Malcolm X. He also seems to mention how the government tries to shut up the people who are speaking out against them. The speaker concludes by saying something along the lines that humans need to cleanse themselves and remember where they came from and enjoy the simple things in life. As the title of this poem describes, the way that the poem is written it does very much sounds like a rant about these topics and the speakers frustrations and opinions.