ARCHAEOLOGY POETICS

One of the pleasures of doing a book of "uncollected poems" is (re-)discovering many old poems, old friends, whose existence long slipped through the sieve that is my memory. Among my excavations are:

-- a trio of poems from a summer spent hangin' out with Philip Lamantia, the poem "Pygmalion's Embrace" which is the architectural plan for a physical poetic space I'm creating viz Napa Valley terrain, my first (and so far only) translation of a poem into my birth tongue Ilokano, ekphrastic "baby poems", the poem "Justice" through which I'd achieved a goal of garnering for the wine cellar a jeroboam of the Judds Hill Winery cabernet by winning its annual poetry contest, and the series "Girl Singing" which includes "The Secret Life of an Angel" that generated 151 multi-genre responses or translations from 47 poets worldwide to create the anthology 1000 Views of "Girl Singing" edited by John Bloomberg-Rissman and released by Leafe Press (U.K., forthcoming later this year).

These sure aren't poems that deserve to be ignored....and I'm happy to bring them to the forefront of attention, hopefully yours when FOOTNOTES TO ALGEBRA is released later this year.

Gads--I'm especially delighted to recover the poems writ for/with Philip. Dude was special -- one of these poems involves Philip's attempts to educate me about agriculture. The following is the bibliography for the poem entitled "Once, Philip Lamantia Said Within One Breath":

“The origins of agriculture—a biological perspective and a hew hypothesis” by Greg Wadley & Angus Martin (Australian Biologist 6:96 – 105, June 1993), with specific references to:

Brantl, V., Teschemacher, H., Henschen, A. & Lottspeich, F., 1979, Novel opioid peptides derived from casein (beta-casomorphins), Hoppe-Seyler’s Zeitschrift fur Physiologische Chemie 360: 1211-6

Cohen, M.N., 1977, Population pressure and the origins of agriculture: an archaeological example from the coast of Peru, in Reed, C.A., ed., The origins of agriculture, Mouton, The Hauge.

Dawkins, R., 1989, Darwinism and human purpose, in Durant, J.R., ed., Human origins, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Lee, R.B. & DeVore, I., 1968, Problems in the study of hunters and gatherers, in Lee, R.B. & DeVore, I., eds, Man the hunter, Aldine, Chicago.

Zioudrou, C., Streaty, R. & Klee, W., 1979, Opioid peptides derived from food proteins: the exorphins Journal of Biological Chemistry 254: 244S9.

So I hope that makes some of youse curious about moi forthcoming Footnotes to Algebra (BlazeVOX Books, 2009).

Thank you for reading. I am glad you are reading here...