From the birth of Hermaphroditus, this booklength poem gets off to a dramatic start. Hermaphroditus' two halves, Herman and Hermione, are forced to go their respective ways. Herman delivers messages to corporate America while Hermione takes to the street as a reporter, stopping at soup kitchens and shelters to interview the homeless. Each explores a variety of American cultural ghettos from Wall Street and the Wild West to ecstatic religious cults and sexual frontiers. The physical and metaphysical trials they endure eventually transform them enough to reconcile their differences and reunite in a joyous grand finale. Through a variety of poetic forms (songs, pantoums, sonnets, parables, prose poems) the poet weaves a saga of and for our time.
Hermaphroditus In America begins with a Prologue and is divided into Six Parts (each titled with a quote from Shakespeare's "The Ages of Man"). Five Entre'acts separate the parts and an Epilogue and Notes follow the poem.
