Overview

AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE describes, in a lyrically charged magical realist narrative, the journey of an unnamed man, catalyzed by war and grief, as he walks to Antarctica, impelled toward the restorative idea of the stark earthly beauty and purity represented by Antarctica, and toward the love that he knows will be awaiting him, as his beloved is making a different, parallel journey. Their love, and the creative and magical power it embodies, is both encouraging and sustaining. The journey, born of a desperate compulsion, is carried out through acts of will, grit, and openness to experience. It takes the protagonist deep into beauty, as well as evil. Both the protagonist's journey and his beloved's fulfill a desire to actively re-envision and recreate reality, to heal and be healed through art and love. Advance Praise for AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE: Readers will be spellbound by Clif Mason's bold, courageous, and mesmerizing novel in verse, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE. This visionary masterpiece depicts a world much like ours in which ""No one claimed to want war / and yet everyone had a hand in it."" Both an elegy for the burning, violence-ravaged earth and a praise song for the magnificence of its creatures, oceans, cosmos, and art, Mason follows two voices-a man's and his beloved's-as they communicate, while apart, through an ebony bead created by the woman. In language as marvelous as the tale being told, Mason never flinches from scenes of destruction in ""the kingdom of flame / & annihilation."" Neither does he cease from celebrating the power of the word-spells of poetry in which it becomes possible to participate in creation rather than destruction. In lines such as: ""Every morning the rivers / forgot their names / so I gave them new ones"" and ""I didn't ask others / the nature of my task. / I simply sang threads of light / into night's dream ocean,"" this incantatory poem brilliantly reminds us of the holy, healing powers of art. Judith Sornberger, author of Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art and I Call to You from Time In this wide-ranging and dream-like poem, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE, the speaker confronts the harsh realities of our world while on a quest to connect with love and beauty, with the goal of re-directing reality. War, violence, and deaths are expressed in surreal language. The diction is entrancing and images are striking, such as in ""Trees galloped, / a hundred horses, in the wind,"" and ""Always the sound of water, the purl/ & purr of its flowing/ its carving and reaching,"" along with ""We must count/ backwards, / age after age, / as wars batter the lands/ & their peoples, / blasting into nothingness/ homes & stores, / schools/ & hospitals, / blasting bodies/ into rags/ & shreds."" Like Odysseus, the protagonist experiences multiple trials along his journey; but ultimately, re-connection to love wins out. Mason is a seasoned wordsmith well worth traveling along with. Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet 2013-2018, Author of Inventions of Love and Feeding the Fire

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Reviews

Readers will be spellbound by Clif Mason's bold, courageous, and mesmerizing novel in verse, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE. This visionary masterpiece depicts a world much like ours in which ""No one claimed to want war / and yet everyone had a hand in it."" Both an elegy for the burning, violence-ravaged earth and a praise song for the magnificence of its creatures, oceans, cosmos, and art, Mason follows two voices-a man's and his beloved's-as they communicate, while apart, through an ebony bead created by the woman. In language as marvelous as the tale being told...this incantatory poem brilliantly reminds us of the holy, healing powers of art. Judith Sornberger, author of Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art and I Call to You from Time Clif Mason, soothsayer, oracle, cautionary tale-teller is our dream guide through this epic surreal poem ""weaving"" us into a Penelope-like tapestry of burning love. He sings with archetypal images so true we feel as though we've experienced all this before in our souls' cinematic journey (grief, despair, love, exaltation). Husband and wife, journeying separately, are accompanied by ""a jet black bead."" They search until they realize, ""they were awake / when they dreamed"" and ""were now asleep"" in this deathbed life review: ""swirling drafts/ of kinetic, / chaotic air . . . of spells filled with fire / & forbearance / fugues & fury."" Echoing voices of Walt Whitman, William Blake and his angels, sounding akin to Edgar Allen Poe, the search continues through moons, suns, wars, human and animal emotions and experiences, ""until the song was the blood / & the blood was the song . . . the beginning / & the end / of the beginning / of everything."" Later, in Antarctica, the husband hangs the moon feather that drifts through the saga into his wife's hair. AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE should be read out loud with someone you love. Barbara Schmitz, author of Sundown at Faith Regional and Just Outside In this wide-ranging and dream-like poem, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE, the speaker confronts the harsh realities of our world while on a quest to connect with love and beauty, with the goal of re-directing reality. War, violence, and deaths are expressed in surreal language. The diction is entrancing and images are striking, such as in ""Trees galloped, / a hundred horses, in the wind,"" and ""Always the sound of water, the purl/ & purr of its flowing/ its carving and reaching,""... Like Odysseus, the protagonist experiences multiple trials along his journey; but ultimately, re-connection to love wins out. Mason is a seasoned wordsmith well worth traveling along with. Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet 2013-2018, Author of Inventions of Love and Feeding the Fire Clif Mason's AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE is a poetic journey that contemplates what it means to be human in the modern world. This evocative book of psalms-that balances hope and despair, peace and war, life and death-calls to mind the famous quote, ""we're all just walking each other home."" As the verses explore the natural and man-made, we must confront many harsh truths about our existence, but the magic of Mason's writing is that, once we embrace love, once we discover our true home, we are like the transformed protagonist finding, ""Skin flushed with song, / flesh sang with beat / & blood."" This lovely voyage expertly crafted by Mason will be treasured and studied for years to come. Cat Dixon, author of What Happens in Nebraska and Eva

Author Information

A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Clif Mason lives with his wife, a visual artist, on the edge of a forest in Bellevue, Nebraska. He is the author of KNOCKING THE STARS SENSELESS (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), and three chapbooks: THE BOOK OF NIGHT & WAKING (winner of the Cathexis Northwest Press Chapbook Prize), SELF-PORTRAITS IN WHICH I DO NOT APPEAR (Finishing Line Press), and FROM THE DEAD BEFORE (Lone Willow Press). His work has appeared in Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, The Classical Outlook, Evergreen Review, Poet Lore, Iota (UK) and Orbis International Literary Journal (UK), among many others. His poems have been featured at and/or awarded prizes by the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest (selected by Marge Piercy as First Place in the National Category & Grand Prize winner), Negative Capability Press, Cathexis Northwest Press, Plainsongs, Writers' Journal, SPSM&H, Amelia, the Midwest Writers' Conference, and the Academy of American Poets. He is a former Fulbright Fellow to Rwanda, Africa.

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