Birthmarks

Poetry. Drama. African American Studies. Native American Studies. "BIRTHMARKS is composed in a direct-action idiom where the poetic 'I' is always the 'we' of struggle and history because Dottie—as she's known by—has understood, perhaps more than others, the importance—nay, the existential demand that American existence be seen through the eyes of those its system of governance and economics has enslaved, imprisoned and humiliated, especially with respect to the African-American and the Woman. She's a woman who's a dynamic inspiration and who has been around the block, which she's going to reveal to you in such a way that you'll see some things you may have missed in your own going-around."—Jack Hirschman, from the Preface

"BIRTHMARKS: these are poems Whitman would love. These are poems of the Body, physical and cosmic, not vaguely mystic, but alive with pleasure and pain, but also with the sacred music of jazz and history—the Horn, the holy breath, that plays 'a Nat Turner riff.' And Dorothy Payne can say, and does, without exaggeration that it 'took everyone back / to the beginning.'"—Joe Napora