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Blood mysteries / Dixie Salazar.
Van Pelt Library PS3569.A459187 B58 2003
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LIBRA - Special PS3569.A459187 B58 2003
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Salazar, Dixie.
- Series:
- Camino del sol
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Women--Social conditions--Poetry.
- Women.
- Women prisoners--Poetry.
- Women prisoners.
- Biculturalism--Poetry.
- Biculturalism.
- Women--Poetry.
- Women--Social conditions.
- Genre:
- Poetry.
- Penn Provenance:
- Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)
- Physical Description:
- 100 pages ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Tucson : University of Arizona Press, [2003]
- Summary:
- A Jehovah's Witness is stabbed in her home by a stranger she once allowed in. A homeless woman masturbates on a park bench. A statue of the Virgin Mary, "plaster receptacle of petitions and foolish pleas," is found in a dump, a missing hand suggesting the sound of a one-handed rosary. Through images brutally honest and disarmingly off-center, Dixie Salazar explores the hidden lives of everyday people, objects, and experiences -- and their transformation in the hidden realms of the heart. Charting furious descents into the darkest crevices of our souls, Salazar paints for us a lost city that exists below our mundane consciousness. Blood Mysteries is a tribute to lost souls, from a suicidal mental patient who doesn't believe she exists to Marilyn Monroe, victim even in the morgue. In finely tuned lyricism showing an uncanny grasp of frayed lives, she gives flesh and vitality to women normally encountered only as statistics. The incarcerated, the homeless, the hopeless. Missing young girls who turn up violated and murdered. Salazar writes with toughness and grit "for all the ship-wrecked saints / and wretches among us." But beneath the surface of words sometimes gritty, sometimes playful, lies a testament to the power of empathy. Blood Mysteries is a forceful prayer for the disenfranchised that offers not merely hope, but transcendence.
- Contents:
- Part 1 For Norma Jean and Others
- Amazing Grace 3
- Nowhere Girl 5
- For Norma Jean 7
- Celeste Paree 9
- The Lost Underwear of Central Park 11
- The Magic Hands Salon 13
- Celebration Cake 15
- Crazy Quilt 18
- Valley of Shadows 24
- Part 2 Still Life with Cactus and Magnolia
- Taking It Back 29
- Still Life with Cactus and Magnolia 32
- American Meltdown 34
- Angel of Brown Street 36
- At the Ponce de Leon Apartments 39
- Pinon Nuts 40
- I Always Check "Other" 42
- Rewriting History 43
- Part 3 Night Life
- Virtual Reality 47
- Rain at Night 49
- Why I'm Not Someone Else 50
- Klezmer Music 52
- Home Alone
- Saturday Night 53
- "Crazy Little Thing ..." 55
- Saturday Night at Albertsons 57
- Meteor Showers, Yosemite 59
- Part 4 Casualties
- Our Lady of Trash Day 63
- Contact Visit 65
- Casualties 67
- Drawing Lesson / Negative Space 69
- Blong In America 70
- Cricket at CCWF 74
- Doing the Dishes 75
- Reflections on C Yard 77
- Part 5 Sorrowful Mysteries
- Sorrowful Mysteries 81
- 3:23 on Monday 83
- Moulton Transformations 85
- April Elegy 87
- E Is in Heaven 88
- Elegy for Jorge 90
- Elegy for the Artist 92
- Summer Rain 94
- Call 1-800-MARY 96.
- ISBN:
- 0816522375
- OCLC:
- 50695251
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