Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems

Janine Pommy Vega is the archetypal New York Beat. Her poetry is intelligent and politically aware, and her performances in English and in Spanish, with and without music are intense, incantatory. Her writings are also intensely autobiographical, following closely in the footsteps of her life-journey: they are the poetic record of her experience-hungry travels through the world and her spiritual retreats into herself; her work with public school children and delinquent youth, and with the inmates and staff of the New York State prison system; her friendships and her love affairs, her farewells and her lingering memories. For this major retrospective volume, she has selected the best lyrics, protests, portraits, and elegies from her first twenty-five years of writing. The result is "an honest and passionate road map to her soul," said the American Book Review, "a book describing one poet's life as a pilgrimage toward herself. It is an exhilarating trip."