South America Mi Hija

In this book-length poem, Doubiago ( El Nino ) recounts a trip through Latin America with her 15-year-old daughter that was also a quest ``to find the words.'' ``The words'' represent a means of explaining--and averting--the tragedies of ``gender identity'': the process in which men ``deny their mothers . . . to find / themselves / to develop / technology / to make /war'' and women deny ``the Feminine'' in themselves ``to keep our fathers.'' Doubiago casts her quest in mythic terms, linking her journey south with Persephone's abduction ``into the abyss'' after being raped by Pluto. Like Persephone, Latin America is the forsaken hija , the daughter who suffers under the Patriarchy: ``the Third World / screams, it drools, / it pisses, it hisses, it / stinks.'' Yet like Doubiago's daughter, it embodies the promise of a future in which ``the gender balance / of Nature'' is restored. Doubiago's impressive grasp of European and indigenous American mythologies allows her to find universal significance in personal trauma. Poetically, however, this universalizing urge often results in abstract psychosexual equations (``all patriarchies / longing for the father'') and offers little in the way of pleasure. (Mar.)