Hard Country

by Sharon Doubiago

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0931122945
• ISBN13: 9780931122941
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: West End Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The American Epic

I don't know why so many refer to "Hard Country" as a woman's epic. Any red blooded male with a scrap of intelligence and a bit of soul will be fiercely moved by this magnifiscent work of art. It is terrifying and profound in its relevance to the American Condition and deserves the notoriety of only the most relevant works of American literature; "Moby Dick" and stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft; and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. The central image is that of Isis looking for the members of her lover and brother Osiris' body. With that kind of scavenging intellect and an almost hypervigilant sensitivity Doubiago peruses the traumas at the bottom of the American soul conjuring poetic images of her lost love from America's living ruin. Hard Times for all - as the song Charles Dickens once referred to goes. That sort of endeavor shines with its own greatness. A greatness of scope and magnitude combined with an impossible intimacy and tenderness - a tenderness that is strong but not unseemly.

Hard Country: A Book of Prophetic Poetry

Out of print since 1987, with a new foreword by the publisherJohn Crawford and a new afterword by Doubiago, this second edition ofHard Country restores to general availability one of the great booksof twentieth century American poetry. Presented in four parts, Headstone, Headland, Heartland, and Heartsea, the final and briefest part which contains the couplet "behind the livid hieroglyphs a woman/ I don't see is on the horizon of the desert, screaming," and closes the entire epic with: buoyed for the moment on my barren coffin, my soft-shelled eggs, with only love for hope look back onto the whole country, its lethal tide its love of death its hatred of love and warn you So we can't say we haven't been warned, and warned in no uncertain terms, and in a multitude of tones. "I am the history of this country" the poet declares in the poem "Bicentennial," which ought to make it pass muster with at least the Ezra Pound traditionalists where an epic is a poem containing history. Hard Country contains several great and distinct individual poems as well including the poem "Hard Country," about, like much of the whole book, Indians and their effect on Americans of all kinds. "One said you think you're just surrounded by your tall buildings/ and farms, but we're all around you. You'll never be rid of us," and later, "They're inside our bodies now where they can't be fought." Other great poems include "I was Born Coming to the Sea," "Avenue of the Giants," "Crazy Horse," and the poem "Wyoming." Back and forth across this country with her face turned straight at it, the poet goes at her peril, reciting its terrible history against the backdrop of its equally awesome potential. This is a poem of the "West" in America because it frequently traces history from the West to the East, in the opposite direction to which the European incursion occurred and from which it is usually taught, as if the history of this disaster was coming towards us instead of spreading out, "over there," beyond New Jersey as our culture is falsely imagined from the fortress of New York. "There is just something spiritual about poetry, something about consciousness, the psyche; it tends to drive you into the forcefield of others and other things. It seems to provide a more direct means for making emotional and truthful critiques of the culture and the facts of your life," Doubiago claims in her "Afterward." Speaking of her methods, she says "Sometimes there really is a beginning, middle, and end. Postmodern/language poetry, the current enforcer against narrative and the I, is not just the poetry of those of us in genuine resistance to the King and exploration for the free world, or simply of the rebellious young who are trying to get away from home, but ominously, the poetry of professors, critics and the Corps who must stay impersonal. It's the poetry of the married and employed, the academicians and the trustfunders. It's the poetry for those who aim to keep their relationships of bl

A Great Woman's Epic

This poem is awsome! Hard Country is an exciting and moving epic poem about a woman's life. Doubiago uses a road trip to to explore her own personal issues. The searching theme in this peom is so moving that even the reader will become involved in the search for her Ramon. A powerfull poem for anybody who likes Whitman's Song of Myself, William's Patterson, or H.D.'s Trilogy. This poem will be a classic!