American Cycle, a sequence of long poems inspired by our folklore and
past, was written over forty-seven years. Its themes are love, local
mythology, history, justice, memory, accomplishment, time. The books are
extraordinary, sustained explosions of authentic American language and
energy. Each is entirely different from the others in style, voice, form
and narrative content; each so rich in imagery and nuance and texture
and event and so finely crafted. . . --Paul Williams, author of Bob
Dylan: Performing Artist.American Cycle holds Spanish words loaned from
Old California, rough colloquialisms in Paul Bunyan, the power of
African-American vernacular English in John Henry, bare oratory in Chief
Joseph, old west phrases in Wyatt Earp, circus ballyhoo in P. T. Barnum,
aviation jargon in Amelia Earhart, backwoods dialect in Blue Ridge. As
Walt Whitman says, I hear America singing, the varied carols. . ."