Doubiago, Sharon

Body & Soul: Poems with: Ephemera

ISBN: 9781891812248
Mena, AZ: Cedar Hill Publications, 2000. First Edition. Signed by Sharon Doubiago to Thomas Rain Crowe. “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, from back cover. Sharon Doubiago (b. 1941) is the author of eleven collections of award-winning poetry, including the recent Naked to the Earth. Psyche Drives the Coast won the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. She’s a recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, two Oregon Literary Arts Fellowships, and is a National Book Award nominee. She’s written four book-length poems, South America Mi Hija, The Husband Arcane, The Arcane of O, and The Visit. Her four award-winning memoirs are The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes, El Nino, My Father’s Love, Vols 1 &2. My Beard is memoir in the form of individual stories rather than the on-going narrative of traditional memoir. Doubiago was deeply entrenched within the Second San Francisco Renaissance–and by extension the Baby Beat Generation–and the great poet, scholar, and fellow Baby Beat Thomas Rain Crowe has said the following of Doubiago: “Sharon was living up in Mendocino during the 1970s, having come from Los Angeles. She was just finding her wings as a poet and would come down to San Francisco on occasion to check out what was going on. And then later she staged “Readings of SF Poets” up in Mendocino–to which we would migrate en masse up Hwy. 1 along the coast for a get-away weekend up in the country near the ocean. I met her in the Trieste Caffe, which was THE bohemian hangout in San Francisco in those days. She gravitated towards Jack Hirschman and was very fond of his work and his vision. I would have to say that I think Jack has to be considered her major influence. He certainly was then–and might still be even to this day. But she was also very interested in women writers. H.D. had a major impact on her and her own brand of feminism. And there were others. While she wasn't directly involved in readings and activist events that were going on in San Francisco during those years, she was an avid student and taking it all in by osmosis, and I can say that her beauty and presence was felt by all whenever she would come to town. She’s stayed true to her vision, which was to become a poet. She just had a major collection of her selected poetry, Naked to the Earth, published in 2017” (The Thomas Rain Crowe Archive [#1010], pg 34). Offered today is the 2000 collection of poetry, Body & Soul. Body & Soul is emblematic of Doubiago’s work insofar as it is wonderfully expressive, deeply feminine, and unabashedly transgressive. Equal parts Rimbaud (1854-1891), Louise Gluck (1943-2023), Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), and Gloria Steinem (b. 1934), Body & Soul is a shamefully underrated collection that is as experimental and wondrous as it is nostalgic and familiar. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book Starting From San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (item #3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (see item #1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Signed in thin black ink at title page beneath her printed name, the author has signed and left her signature red lipstick marks, and an inscription that reads: “For Thomas Rain Crowe. For his beautiful wife (I am sorry! I’ve lost 2 address books, 3 hard drives, my mother since I saw you last, some of which visit is recorded here–NAN?--just now comes to me. Body & Soul you 2. Sharon Doubiago Aug 19, 2000.” We have found and retained, between front cover and title page, a copy of Sharon Doubiago’s Alima Prayers (Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series No. 49) with her signature lipstick marks, and a flyer for the WATERSHED environmental Poetry Festival September 9, 2000. Softcover. First edition as stated at copyright page, first printing as indicated by number sequence thereon. Book is in very fine condition with only light wear to fine edges and slight smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #7398]

Price: $60.00