Poetry. "And the disjunction is simply the way / we search for new images," writes Andrew Scheling in one of these 108 stanzas. The elements joined and disjoined on the surface are taken from natural history, linguistics, and explorations in North American poetry. Having studied for thirty years the languages and poetry of old Asia, Schelling sets out to read the landscapes, the flora and fauna, of the Southern Rocky Mountains with comparable attention to grammar and glottal stops. At the core of these poems is an encounter with Arapaho, an Algonkian language—and a whiff of the postmodern archaic.

Author City: BOULDER, CO USA

Andrew Schelling lives in the Southern Rocky Mountains, dividing his time between Boulder, Colorado, and a former mining camp in the Indian Peaks. He has worked on land use in the American West, ecology, and wolf reintroduction. Recent books include FROM THE ARAPAHO SONGBOOK (poetry; La Alameda Press, 2011), OLD TALE ROAD (poetry; Empty Bowl Press, 2008) and WILD FORM, SAVAGE GRAMMAR: POETRY, ECOLOGY, ASIA (essays; La Alameda Press, 2003). For thirty years he has studied Sanskrit and Indian raga, and published seven books of translation from India's early poets, most recently a revised edition of DROPPING THE BOW: POEMS OF ANCIENT INDIA (White Pine Press, 2008). He teaches at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School and at Deer Park Institute in India's bird-rich Himalayan foothills.