Driving Face Down: Poems

Winner of the 2000 Blue Lynx Prize "What of the tired, the lost, the cast aside? We behold them all, revealed in their human complexity with tenderness, wit and rage in Driving Face Down, a book that's been a long time in coming. From Robbins's Chagallesque portraits to his vast, unflinching vision of LA, I admire the gritty, original, uncompromising voice that drives these rich, furious poems." - Dorianne Laux, Final Judge for 2000 Competition "Doren Robbins combines politics and ecstacy, mourning and dancing. He is a superb poet, centered, strong, gentle, musical. He puts the drivelers to shame. He is a truth-teller." - Gerald Stern "Robbins' work sounds very little like most of what is being published in America by poets his age. . . . He comes out of another tradition, one we forget in these indifferent times at our own peril, the tradition of Villon, of Corbiere, Celine, Henry Miller, Tom McGrath, and most recently Gerald Stern, the great outsiders who bless our daily lives with their boundless love and rage." - Philip Levine Doren Robbinsis author of two previous collections, Sympathetic Manifesto, and Dignity in Naples and North Hollywood. He is on the faculty at Foothill College in Los Altos, California.