Jenny Jo Wennlund studied Poetics, Magick, Buddhism, and Creative Practice under Diane di Prima in San Francisco beginning in 2001. She assisted and taught alongside di Prima at both 826 Valencia and the San Francisco Public Library during Diane’s SF Poet Laureateship (2009-2011), and worked on multiple transcription and documentation projects until Diane’s passing on October 25, 2020.

Jenny Jo’s books include It is Difficult to Understand Mr Wren Because He Says Nothing (Veruka Press, 2006) and Constellations (Shayna Press, 2008). She wrote numerous plays— The Robber Bridegroom, The Blue Flower, Curse of The Goddamned Ship, and several more miniature plays and performance works for Stars And Garters Theater Company, which she co-founded in San Francisco in 2003.

Wennlund’s poetry has been published in Ur Vox, Journal of the Underlying Voice, Look Look Magazine, El Pobre Mouse, among others. She co-published the art and poetry zine called Lilikoi, as well as co-hosted The Poet’s Salon, a bi-weekly poetry reading held in San Francisco at various venues in the Lower Haight and North Beach. Jenny Jo continues to read and present poetry for City Lights Bookstore and the San Francisco Public Library in memorial of Diane di Prima, as well as manage and run di Prima’s social media page to carry forth her revolutionary and deeply impactful work, especially in uplifting the voices of artists who are mothers. The following poem, study on the hero’s journey, first appeared in Ur Vox:

study on the hero’s journey

“and the lower you descend into this bottomless pit

the higher you will rise”

Philip Lamantia

it was

dusk when

Hercules joined

me on

the horizon:

absolute nadir

side underneath /

seat of chair

the last the basic

fundamentally /

actually

the laboratory:

lowland bower

the key in the swamp is to maintain perception

of perception’s absence

it is possible to misname the labyrinth’s center

it is possible to take personally what is

the collective’s bowel

it is possible, even, to live and die believing

this

not one shall visit the underworld ignorant of arson

no eagle soar who is dumb to personal conflagration

perhaps the ownership of pomegranate seed dually

emancipates and enslaves

do not forget the nature of the gatekeepers:

inherently constituted to elicit precise sensory

response:

i.e. loneliness, by nature, insists upon our absolute isolation,

utter misunderstanding. the shower is as cold each morning.

not necessarily nobility.

though we drink each essence,

O rising stars

remain upright / threaded,

crawling north / the serpent,

crawling like spiders, the blueprint

stars, O / the rising

myrmidons of

light