Kirjahaku

When Shawn Doubiago graduated from high school, she and her mother Sharon, embarked on a journey through Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. In Cuzco, Peru, standing before an alter where the Incas had sacrifced their female virgins, the daughter asked, \u201cAre there any good men?\u201d South American Mi Hija is Sharon Doubiago\u2019s reply. Set amidst the mysteries and tragedies of South American culture, this book-length narrative poem is both an account of their journey and a feminist exploration of the struggle between the sexes.

Love on the Streets is a selection from two of Doubiago's book-length poems, Hard Country and South America Mi Hija and from the collections Psyche Drives the Coast and Body and Soul, plus new poems. Hard Country takes place in 1976, on a journey across the U.S. with a lover, climaxing on the lake where his mother drowned herself when he was ten. South America Mi Hija is a journey the poet made with her 15 year-old daughter to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Psyche Drives the Coast are poems written while Doubiago lived mainly on the road, and in diverse, passionate communities of poets from Mendocino to the Canadian border. Body and Soul was written while she was a resident of Oregon, and the new poems are written from her present home in San Francisco.

First published by West End Press in 1982, this book-length poem about a journey across America has been out of print for a decade but has maintained its underground reputation as a major response to the male epic consciousness of twentieth-century American poetry."In this political geography of the continent's body, the land is corporeal, erotic and ever-present. . . . Doubiago's imagination is always unified and political. . . . Sharon Doubiago is 'a complex of occasions, ' a brilliant response to Whitman, an American poet, free, spiritual and gifted."--Carolyn Forche"A unique search for the meaning of personal and national history, narrated by a woman seeking her own liberation and fulfillment through struggle against the reactionary mores and politics of her time."--Thomas McGrath"Sharon Doubiago fearlessly enters the labyrinth of our history, our search and danger as woman as human as deep American wanderer. . . . It is a long saga, a woman's history and a history of us all."--Meridel Le Sueur

Sharon Doubiago's writing is fluid, unpredictable, and never stops giving. All the old songs sound new, and the lines between past, present and future dissolve in a rush of pleasure and sensual delight. The world is imperfect and in need of repair and she takes nothing for granted. My Beard reminds me most of Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son--and the absence of closure is a source of both joy and despair. She is in unchartered waters, but the rules of the game are her own. Lewis Warsh I was amazed by her reading. This whole soul came out and in detail and quite complete. She's very conscious. She sounds like Kerouac or someone, like really good. The energy but it's more the details, precise details. Doubiago sees things, she notices things in the middle of these crisis moments. Allen Ginsberg Doubiago's My Beard is an essential book, essential to her body of work, essential to her on-going story, and just as essential for its outsider's account of the insider literary scenes of our time. I wonder how many great American poets could write THIS story, a story of mothering the sports star and the return of the ex-wife to the town of the marriage ... Doubiago is at turns the poet (check out the detail of Max's hands) and Lucia Berlin hard-reality story writer. Let's attribute accomplishment to her projective verse poet's eye and her talent for narrative. Rich Blevins I was mesmerized by "Fornography." I'm not quiet sure why. The evocation of a familiar scene from long ago. The tensions around love and gender. The precariousness of your life. Like everything you do, it's raw and challenging, pushing everything of lighter weight out of the way. You're a fearless writer, and yet there is just below the surface the greatest tenderness, the greatest desire not to engage but to be at peace." Barry Lopez