Archaeomythology - (Stark Ravine Mad) by Kathryn Dohrmann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The title, Archaeomythology (which is also the title of the last poem in the collection), reflects a kind of digging. Not in the traditional sense, of course, but psychic digging, where the process of writing works like a metaphorical spade or shovel. The opening epigraph, "the places I inhabit and that inhabit me" (taken from an interview with the late Barry Lopez), foretells delving into places that have mattered most: home, garden, nearby wild nature, childhood landscapes.

The poems are not ordered in an obvious way-by time period or type of place, for example-because they coexist and evolve together in memories, daydreams, and reflections. In one sense, the poems become personal mythologies, revealing themselves as they are written. In another, however, they offer a larger, collective mythology, an invitation to explore how physical places, past and present, domestic and wild, come to inhabit us, shaping us as we shape them.