Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady: Women's Writings on the Drug Experience [Anglais] [Relié]

The historic value of medicinal plants in our nation has run the spectrum from reverence to abomination. If you lived in America in the 1920's, you were encouraged by advertisers to give your child a little opium beverage to assist it with painful teething. Now we know and well understand that drugs are bad and very very evil, unless we have a prescription. The women in this book did not have our wise governance to guide them heart and hand and were left at the mercy of potent elixirs and potions that stirred their spirits to poetry and occasionally into the abyss itself. Witness, for instance, the Baroness Elsea Von Loringhoven. The Baroness was influential in NYC's early Dadaist movement. She could be found at full dressed balls of the day wearing only birdcages (with live birds) atop her head, postage stamps and tea cozies in the appropriate places for decency, and a purple half shaved coiffure to top things off. Her poetry lilts to the herbage of her pipe and heart:

Appalling Heart

The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)

City stir----wind on eardrum----

dancewind : herbstained----

flowerstained----silken----rustling----

tripping----swishing----frolicking----

courtesing----careening----brushing----

flowing----lying down----bending----

teasing----kissing : treearms----grass----

limbs----lips.

City stir on eardrum---- .

In night lonely

peers---- :

moon----riding !

pale----with beauty aghast----

too exalted to share !

in space blue----rides she away from mine chest----

illumined strangely----

appalling sister !

Herbstained----flowerstained----

shellscented----seafaring----

foresthunting----junglewise----

desert gazing----

rides heart from chest----

lashing with beauty----

afleet----

across chimney----

tinfoil river----

to meet----

another's dark heart----

Bless mine feet !

This book is a treasure trove of the little known history of women who have strayed from the well trod freeways of our good and holy lord. Women who have removed their shoes and danced in the garden, if only for a while. Enjoy!