| I wish to thank William F. May, Carey Maguire Professor of Ethics, Southern Methodist University, for analyzing this work and suggesting many improvements in its content, style, structure, and approach. His discussion of covenantal ethics and the theology of immanence illuminated many of the poems for me. Professor Paul A. Olson generously read early versions of this anthology, suggested additional poetry, and in his works on American Indian literature, on Chaucer, and on wisdom literature suggested ideas and approaches that helped me understand the poetics of this poetry and enriched my appreciation and enjoyment. Professor Paul Zolbrod, whose understanding of the poetics of Sir Philip Sidney illuminates his work on Navajo and other American Indian oral literatures, emphasized the primacy of performance in the structure, rhetoric, and vision of these poems in his comments on an early version of this anthology. Professor Jean-Anne Strebinger closely analyzed content and form and made many structural and interpretative suggestions that improved the commentary and made the translations smoother and more readable. The subscribers of the Native American Literature list on the Internet carried on discussions that made me reexamine my assumptions and taught me a familiarity with the cultures into which this poetry fits that I could have gained from no other source. I also wish to thank Michael Palmer, M.D., Leonard Gundersen, M.D., and Victor Trastec, M.D., without whom this book could not have been completed. Jill M., A. L. Jr., and Ingrid W. Soens displayed patience and tolerance. Jeff Grathwohl, my editor at the University of Utah Press, was very helpful, trusting that the text would finally come to fruition, in the face of delays, revisions, and interruptions. What is valuable in this book I owe to others. I do, however, with the utmost confidence, claim any errors, grotesqueries, or infelicities as entirely my own. |
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