deangulo

Jaime de Angulo

Home Among the
Swinging Stars

Collected Poems


edited by Stefan Hyner


176 pages

1-888809-47-7

$18.00

 

Jaime de Angulo (1887-1950) was born in Paris of Spanish parents. He came to America in 1905, found work as a cowboy and ended up in San Francisco the day before the Great Earthquake in 1906. A picaresque life followed as a homesteader in Big Sur, medical doctor, psychologist, renowned linguist, and novelist. As a linguist, de Angulo contributed to the knowledge of many Northern Californian languages, as well ethnomusicological investigations. He lived among the tribes he studied and tried to become integrated into their daily lives. Much of his life and work exemplifies his recognition of the trickster wisdom in their native “coyote tales.” Invited by Mabel Dodge Luhan to visit Taos, he turned out to be a vivid chapter in her artistic circle. Brilliant and eccentric, Ezra Pound called him "the American Ovid." Bohemian to the core, he was friend and colleague to poets, composers, and scholars such as Harry Partch, Henry Miller, Robinson Jeffers, Henry Cowell, Franz Boas, Carl Jung, D.H. Lawrence, and many others. Renderings of Pit River lore in his book Indian Tales had a distinct influence on Beat literature, especially Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac. Besides prose, there exists an abundance of poetry which is collected in Home Among the Swinging Stars and includes the out-of-print Coyote’s Bones, versions of Shaman Songs, translations of Federico Garcia Lorca, and unpublished poems.

Edited by German poet and translator, Stefan Hyner who was educated at the Universities of Heidelberg and Taipei where he studied Sinology and East-Asian art history. Teaching and writing in Asia and America from 1981 to 1989, he visited China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, the United States, Mexico and Canada. Author of numerous poetry books and translations from Chinese and English, Hyner is currently at work on the archives of Italian Swiss artist/poet Franco Beltrametti (1937-1995).

This book is published with the cooperation of the Literary Estate of Jaime de Angulo.