Pieces of a Song: Selected PoemsDiane di Prima Feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Swarthmore College for two years before moving to Greenwich Village in Manhattan and becoming a writer in the emerging Beat movement. There, she developed friendships with poets Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank OHara and Audre Lorde. After joining Timothy Learys intentional community in upstate New York, she moved to San Francisco in 1968.