My encounter with Technicians of the Sacred: A range of poems from Africa, America, Asia, and Oceana came about the same time I was taking up yoga in the early '70s. This sampler of so-called primitive peoples had a freshness I found stunning. Many of the translations were fragmentary, giving the sense of having just been excavated from an archeological dig. Others reflected my sense of discovery arising from the practice of meditation. These were unlike any poems I had previously encountered, and they altered my writing direction.
Thus, I was immersed in what he called deep image and ethnopoetics before I'd ever heard the terms.
I know it's not his only book in my library, and I am anticipating looking for the others when we move many of our goods out of storage.
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