Juniper Fuse
Upper Paleolithic Imagination and the Construction of the Underworld
Author: Clayton Eshleman
A commanding meditation on the development of early human imagination.
For over thirty years, Clayton Eshleman has studied the Ice Age cave art of southwestern France—Juniper Fuse is the culmination of this work. Named after the primitive hand lamp wicks used to light cave walls, the book, in Ronald Gottesman's words, is "a fabulous three-dimensional tapestry of scholarship. Original and intense, it poses serious questions about human nature and its relation to the animal and natural worlds." Juniper Fuse is also a profound examination, in poetry and in prose, of the nature of poetic imagination and personal myth-making. Drawing upon art history and archaeology as well as poetics and personal experience, Eshleman delivers a potent distillation of the "paleoecology" of our minds, a provocative, and wholly passionate, exploration into the nature of consciousness.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
A commanding meditation on the development of early human imagination.
For over thirty years, Clayton Eshleman has studied the Ice Age cave art of southwestern France—Juniper Fuse is the culmination of this work. Named after the primitive hand lamp wicks used to light cave walls, the book, in Ronald Gottesman's words, is "a fabulous three-dimensional tapestry of scholarship. Original and intense, it poses serious questions about human nature and its relation to the animal and natural worlds." Juniper Fuse is also a profound examination, in poetry and in prose, of the nature of poetic imagination and personal myth-making. Drawing upon art history and archaeology as well as poetics and personal experience, Eshleman delivers a potent distillation of the "paleoecology" of our minds, a provocative, and wholly passionate, exploration into the nature of consciousness.
Description
For over thirty years, Clayton Eshleman has studied the Ice Age cave art of southwestern France--Juniper Fuse is the culmination of this work. Named after the primitive hand lamp wicks used to light cave walls, the book, in Ronald Gottesman's words, is "a fabulous three-dimensional tapestry of scholarship. Original and intense, it poses serious questions about human nature and its relation to the animal and natural worlds." Juniper Fuse is also a profound examination, in poetry and in prose, of the nature of poetic imagination and personal myth-making. Drawing upon art history and archaeology as well as poetics and personal experience, Eshleman delivers a potent distillation of the "paleoecology" of our minds, a provocative, and wholly passionate, exploration into the nature of consciousness.
Critic Reviews
“"This arresting diptych of verse and philosophical prose charts a twenty-five-year obsession with the prehistoric cave paintings of southwestern France. The region's enigmatic art work, dating from the Upper Paleolithic era, has been a constant muse for Eshleman.... Breathless accounts of cave exploration appear in counterpoint with poems in eerily primordial voices. ... For Eshleman, it seems, the artist's imaginative predicament is something of a cave itself, both maze and refuge."”
..".Eshleman's theory is fascinating and affectionately described. Juniper Fuse is an essential read for anyone interested in prehistory, cave art, the development of consciousness, myth, and religion. Unusual in its approach, remarkably creative in its intellectual breadth, and convincing in its arguments, it adds significantly to our understanding of early humanity."--Oyster Boy Review
About the Author
The recipient of The National Book Award in 1979 for his co-translation of Cesar Vallejo's Complete Posthumous Poetry, Clayton Eshleman founded and edited two seminal and highly-regarded literary journals, Caterpillar (1967 - 1973) and Sulfur (1982 - 2000). Eshleman has published twelve books of original poetry, two volumes of essays, and translations of Vallejo, Cesaire, Neruda, Artaud, Holan and Deguy. Award-winning poet, feminist thinker and political activist Adrienne Rich is the author of many books, most recently Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995 - 1998 (1999).
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