I Breathe a New Song; Poems of the Eskimo.
Richard Lewis
Library Binding
(Simon & Schuster, Oct. 1, 1971)
In Eskimo, the words meaning "to make poetry" and "to Breathe" derive from anerca, "the soul." A poem is words infused with breath, and making poems is as basic to life as eating or hunting. The poems themselves are regarded as unimportant - outpourings of the moment, discarded once they've been used. Since the Eskimo saw no need to save poems, it is fortunate that anthropologists and explorers who visited the Arctic in the last hundred years wrote many of them down, From this material Richard Lewis has selected 90 representative poems: magical chants, lullabies, songs to bring luck while hunting, songs to taunt enemies. Anthropologist Edmund Carpenter's fascinating introduction describes the people, their beliefs, and their ways of forming poetry. Bold graphic illustrations by Oonark complete this beautiful and significant book.