A Sexual Tour of the Deep South: Poems

by Rosemary Daniell

some fading to cover and general wear

Genres: Poetry

97 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Rosemary Daniell's new book, Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women's Lives, was published by Henry Holt and Company in May, 2006. Its prequel, The Woman Who Spilled Words All Over Herself: Writing and Living the Zona Rosa Way, was published by Faber & Faber, in 1997. Her revolutionary memoir, Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex and Suicide in the Deep South (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980; Henry Holt & Company, 1989; Hill Street Press, 1999) won the 1999 Palimpsest Prize for a most-requested out-of-print book, and was re-issued that same year. Along with her second memoir, Sleeping with Soldiers (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1984; Hill Street Press, 2003), it was a forerunner of the current memoir trend. She is the author of five other books of poetry and prose, including and her collection of essays, Confessions of a (Female) Chauvinist (Hill Street Press, 2001), a novel, The Hurricane Season (William Morrow & Company, 1992); two collections of poetry, A Sexual Tour of the Deep South (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975; Push Button Publishing, 1994) and Fort Bragg & Other Points South (Henry Holt & Company, 1987).

Among her awards are two N.E.A. Fellowships in creative writing, one in poetry, another in fiction. In addition, her features and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and papers, including Harper’s Bazaar, New York Woman, Mademoiselle, The New York Times Book Review and Mother Jones; she has also been a guest on many national radio and television shows, such as Merv Griffin, Donahue, The Diane Rehm Show, Larry King Live and CNN’s “Portrait of America.” She is profiled in the book Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. In 2008, she received a Governor’s Award in the Humanities for her impact on the state of Georgia; early in her career, she instigated and led writing workshops in women's prisons in Georgia and Wyoming, served as program director for Georgia's Poetry in the Schools, and worked for a dozen years in Poetry in the Schools programs in Georgia, South Carolina, and Wyoming.

Also known as one of the best writing coaches in the country, she is the founder and leader of Zona Rosa, a series of creative writing workshops in Savannah and Atlanta, and cities throughout the world, as described in People and Southern Living magazines, and attended by such outstanding writers as John Berendt, Bruce Feiler, Pat Conroy, Cassandra King, and Eric Haney. To date, almost 60 Zona Rosans have become published authors. For further information, see Rosemary’s web page at www.myzonarosa.com.


“Rosemary Daniell is one of the great writing teachers I’ve seen at work in the country.” – Pat Conroy

“Rosemary Daniell is enormously gifted. Her work is risky – in the best sense of the word. She is one of the women by whom our age will be known in times to come.” – Erica Jong

“She has…proved just how earthy, inspiring, and even rapturous her take on the creative process can be.” – People

Reviews

[Aberjhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosemary Daniell started out as a poet who wrote lyrical verse on nature with such titles as "green frogs" and "black animals." Between those innocent lyrical beginnings, which served largely to hone Daniell's mastery of her craft, and her volumes of noteworthy fiction and nonfiction, A Sexual Tour of the Deep South stands as a singular explosive event in the corpus of her work.

Crackling with the energies of self-liberation via a sudden focused expansion of consciousness, it is a uniquely significant document in the canon of womanist literature. Much of the imagery and details in A Sexual Tour of the Deep South are not for the mild-hearted or overly sensitive. The contents of the poetry swing back and forth between the erotically exceptional and the downright raunchy. One might nearly have expected Charles Baudelaire to compose these poems had he been a politically informed southern woman writing in the 1960s.

Whereas the book can be read with real pleasure on its more graphic levels, it assumes a deeper meaning when the erotic is accepted as a metaphor for the individual claiming all rights to her own being.

Aberjhani
author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

[Cjschlottman · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems were the cutting edge of feminist literature when they were published. They are liberating, not just for the author but to all who read them. They stand today as a beacon of empowerment for women and should be a must-read for any aspiring female poet. I have read it three times.

[Abigail Munson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poems brings to light the sometimes sweet other times grotesque idea of Eros in the south. I grew up in a small town in Georgia and Daniell writes a lot about things that I recognize from the very core of being— high school boys in Macon Georgia, white gloved debutantes, stars, sweaty velvet night, backseats of trucks, mumbled slang, fried chicken and broken china. Every poem was intense and honest. My favorites were: Liturgy, Radical surgery ,Before the Fall, Girl Friends, Oh, Men!, Mary, Mary, The Victim and The State of Georgia.

***also might I add more than a year later that if you read this collection of poetry while listening to the album Yr Body is Nothing by Boy Harsher while living in a tiny tiny tiny southern town in Georgia you would intimately understand my life. This collection fucking kills it.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 D185s 1975