Dear Contributors:

MM: The Sentence Commuted is nearing completion. We would like to begin formatting and editing the text.

(1)   La Toan Vinh's frontispiece
(2)   Ron Phelps's "The Sentence of the Gods"
(3)   Peter Carravetta's "Towards a Poetica Cosmographica"
(4)   Frank W. Stevenson's "Dissolution and Flow in Morrison's SOLUNA"
(5)   Ron Phelps's "The Darkness of Light"
(6)   Marc de Hay's essay in Dutch on U and Need
(7)   Gio Ferri's "Un brano di Need"
(8)   Guido Vermeulen's essay in French on Revolution
(9)   Alexandra Sattler's "Seeing: An Essay on Each"
(10) Alexandra Sattler's "Im Weltraum: zu Every Second" (still to be revised)
(11) Jokie X. Wilson's essay in English on Magic
(12) Manjushree S. Kumar's "Morrison's Realization: Hermes and the Modernist/Postmodernist Interface"
(13) Frank W. Stevenson's "Sign and Ritual in Morrison's Engendering"
(14) Kwon Young Joung's essay in Korean on Engendering
(15) Robin Schultz's "I was the guy what . . . "
(16) Arvind Thomas' "Causality, Chance, Intertext, Topos and Plot in MM's Happening"
(17) Mowbray Allan's "Inventing Divine" (still to be revised)
(18) Arvind Thomas' essay in English on Divine
(19) Frank W. Stevenson's "Focus and Transfiguration in Morrison's Divine"

(20) Miguel Muñoz' computer graphic of Don Quijote
(21) Denis Mizzi's photomontage of Vergil
(22) Keiichi Nakamura's katakana and hiragana versions of MM's name
(23) Hassan Errezzaki's transliteration in Arabic calligraphy of MM's name

(24) Han Wei-min's "Xu" for the critical edition of Engendering
(25) Flavio Ermini's "Introduzione" for Particolare e universale
(26) MM's "A Note on Genre"
(27) MM's "Preface to Every Second
(28) MM's "The Question of the Personal"

(29) Alessio Rosoldi's "L'Allegoria e l'epica occidentale"
(30) Alexandra Sattler's "Erfahrung in spät moderner britischer Literatur" (still to be revised)
(31) Valérie Gauthier's French translation of "Ten Poems from Second"
(32) Alexandra Sattler's German translation of "Ten Poems from Second"
(33) Cai Yuan-huang's Chinese translation of "Ten Poems from Second"
(34) Lina Unali's Italian translation of "Ten Poems from Second," 1
(35) Nadia Trata's Greek translation of "Ten Poems from Second," 1
(36) Miguel Muñoz' Spanish translation of "Escapade '74-'75"
(37) Olga Uverskaya's Russian translation of "What a Life!"

(38) Terry Kennedy's interview with MM, "The Heart of the Matter"
(39) Manjushree S. Kumar's interview with MM, "The Cultural Matrix"
(40) Liang I-nian's cover illustration with "portraits" of the 30 contributors

For his Introduction Richard Beck requires biographical and bibliographical information from the following people:

Guido Vermeulen
Jokie X. Wilson
Frank W. Stevenson (for the third paragraph about him)
Miguel Muñoz (for the second paragraph about him)
Olga Uverskaya

Please send copious details to <rbeck@ou.edu> and please copy <madison_morrison@attglobal.net>.

With many thanks,

MM

1)  Moisès Stankowich in Barcelona says that he will give us a piece in Catalan about cultural politics.
Kwon Young Joung in Gyeongju has submitted a final, proof read version of "Women in Korea."
Ad Breedveld in Veenhuizen is doing a piece in Dutch on Every Second for an art magazine.

(2) Again I have solicited a comment on Or and Pattaya in Thai, this time from an artist in Smutprakarn.
In the absence of word from Olga Uverskaya I have asked a Russian in Krasnodar to translate "What a Life!"
I have asked two Finns if one or another might comment on In and its representation of Scandinavia.

(3) Alexandra Sattler has promised that she will revise her second translation and second article by July 31.
MM:The Sentence Commuted, however, still requires comment in English on some aspect of Every Second
plus a piece about All, perhaps in relation to the landscape of Arizona and/or Ming landscape painting.

(4) Mowbray Allan needs to conclude his reflections on surrealism, realism and superrealism in Divine, and
Alessio Rosoldi needs to supply us with a digital version of his translation of the essay on allegory and western epic.

(5) The following people have yet to supply biographical and bibliographical information, along with "statements"
regarding their projects and principles, so that Richard Beck may write paragraphs about them in his Introduction:

Guido Vermeulen
Jokie X. Wilson
Frank W. Stevenson (for the third paragraph about him)
Miguel Muñoz ("statements" for the second paragraph about him)
Ad Breedveld
Moisès Stankowich

Dear Contributors:

As the June 1 deadline approaches, MM: The Sentence Commuted has 48 contributions by 33 contributors. I am counting in these totals Richard Beck, the author of the Introduction and Liang Yi-nian, the artist who is representing the contributors in her cover illustration, neither of whom will appear in the Introduction, which as of now will instead describe the 31 other contributors and their 46 contributions. For everyone and their work to be properly described we still require biographical and bibliographical information from several people, whose names I have listed in two earlier emails..
Seven contributors have recently sent us their translation of or commentary on Sentence of the Gods, and we are hoping that three more will soon do likewise. Nadia Trata has given us a Greek translation of "Ten Poems from Second," 1; Miguel Muñoz, a Spanish translation of Escapade '74-'75; Marc de Hay, his essay in Dutch on U and Need; Jokie X. Wilson, his essay in English on Magic; Ad Breedveld, his notice in Dutch of Scenes From the Planet, Every Second and the work of Guido Vermeulen; Carol Stetser has created a visual work in response to All; and Mowbray Allan has finished his essay in English on Divine. Alexandra Sattler, who reports that she has passed her Dutch exam so that she may enroll in Leiden University, promises that she will complete the revision of her third and fourth contributions, a translation of "Experience in Late Modern British Literature" and an essay in German on Every Second; Arvind Thomas, a student from Delhi enrolled in Fordham's Ph.D.program for medieval studies, reports that, having finished his reading of La Divina Commedia in the original, he has begun work on his Introduction to the deluxe edition of Divine, which he will write in English, so that it may be translated into Italian; word from Paul Tiililä, a former Nokia executive, since retirement a decade ago embarked on another successful career as artist, suggests that we may before long have comment in Finnish on In, a book about four of the five Scandinavian countries.
Four more desiderata defined in earlier memos, however, remain to be satisfied. I mention these to you, the contributors, since it seems to me in everyone's interest that the world at large be represented. Thus far China, Russia, Southeast Asia and subequatorial Africa are not represented in our collection. My official contacts in The People's Republic of China have not responded to requests for comment on Excelling, a book that accurately describes Shanghai, Congqing, Chengdu, Kunming and Guangzhou; an alternative would be for us to include comment in his or her native language by an American or a European Sinologist. Unable to reestablish contact with Olga Uverskaya, a student in Moscow, I have sent out half a dozen more requests that a Russian translate "What a Life!"; an easier alternative would be to translate the prose poem "Old and New but Young and Old." No Thai has been willing to comment on Or; accordingly, I have sent out another request for comment and am including another hint in this email. In the absence of further contacts in subequatorial Africa, where I had solicited comment on any topic from an African perspective, I now ask if any black person anywhere would like to be included in this collection; THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, II (originally printed in Sleep, reprinted in the Taiwanese and the Indian Selected Poems, and again in SOLUNA: Collected Earlier Poems), along with passages in Realization (see pp. 36-37; 53-55) handsomely represent black ideology, black American experience, and black Americans. (I can supply these texts.)
At the same time, a black person's perspective on any other dimension of our global experience would be equally welcome. In this category (of commentary not concerned with my work) we have received an essay in Hangeul by Kwon Young Joung of Gyeongu, titled "Women in Korea," and we have been promised another in Catalan by Moisès Stankowich, on cultural politics in Barcelona. Similar contributions from China, the Slavic world and Southeast Asia, in their author's native language, would be acceptable and heartily appreciated. Please pass along this information to any potential contributor.
The absolute deadline for new contributions is July 31. August 1 I must leave Taiwan to renew my visa. For ten weeks I will be on the road in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, where I will be editing the text of MM: The Sentence Commuted in my laptop computer. Till October 16, when I return to Taiwan, I will be only sporadically in touch by email.

With many thanks for all your help,
Sincerely,

MM
 

MADISON MORRISON BOOK

The Heavenly Appreciators of Sentence of the Gods
The Humbly Appreciative MM

With Bangalore Esightings, Every Second and the Italian edition of Particular and Universal now in print and their distribution under way we are making a final call for contributions to MM: The Sentence Commuted. The coming year will be taken up with raising money for this collection, editing, formatting and proof reading text, scanning in visual works, designing a cover and seeing it all through the press. If you have contributed something and would like to have a look at page proofs, let us know. If your contribution is not yet finished, please finish it and send it along. Several people have yet to provide biographical and bibliographical information for Richard Beck's Introduction. Please forward this information to <rbeck@ou.edu> and copy <madison_morrison@attglobal.net>.

MM:SC's cover will incorporate a delightful 5 x 6 grid of 30 drawings that stand for its contributors. The artist is a ten-year-old Taiwanese girl, whose eight-year-old sister has embellished the back cover of Bangalore Esightings with a monkey who gazes out at the viewer from the branches of an enormous tree. The girls' father is working with the older sister to implement my notes for depicting the contributors to this collection (e.g., Indian woman with large glasses, Arabic man who lives in the desert, curly-haired avant-garde North American poet, elegantly-attired Italian editor, French woman with two adolescent children). The text will be preceded by a frontispiece, a portrait of MM by La Toan Vinh.
MM:SC's first section will include general introductory essays by (1) Ron Phelps and (2) Peter Carravetta, followed by articles, essays and a reminiscence in the serial order of the books that they are concerned with: (3) Frank W. Stevenson's article on SOLUNA, (4) Mark Sonnenfeld's verse appreciation of O, (5) Ron Phelps's essay on Light, (6) a piece in Dutch by Marc de Hay on U (or perhaps another book) and (7) Gio Ferri's Italian translation of the opening lines of Need plus his summary description on the poem. Turning to ARES: we are hoping to have (8) a piece in French by Guido Vermeulen on Revolution, to be followed by (9) Alexandra Sattler's essay on Each, in German, and (10) her yet-to-be-written essay on Second and Every, also in German. Continuing with HERMES: we have asked that Douglas Berman revise (11) his essay on Magic so as to complete the commentary on the trilogy MES before the hermeneutic reader arrives at (12) Manjushree S. Kumar's article on Realization and (13) Frank W. Stevenson's Afterward to Engendering. These two pieces will be capped with (14) a brief reminiscence by Robin Schultz, editor of Poetry Around and publisher of the original versions of Realization,I, Realization,II and Engendering. Since Her, Exists and Regarding are as yet incomplete, the only guide to understanding the HERA sequence will be a single paragraph in Richard Beck's Introduction. Accordingly, All, a description of Arizona modeled on Ming Dynasty landscape painting, would be an excellent subject for a last-minute contribution. The text, only 22 pages long, is available in SCENES FROM THE PLANET: In, All, Excelling, Or, Divine (All is the last book in HERA and the first in APHRODITE). If such a contribution should not materialize, there next will appear (15) Arvind Thomas' article on Happening, followed by three pieces on Divine: (16) Mowbray Allan's essay, (17) Frank W. Stevenson's Afterward for the putative deluxe edition and (18) Arvind Thomas' Introduction to the same. There has yet to be any commentary devoted to In, a pastoral of summertime Scandinavia; likewise, to Excelling, an in situ description of Shanghai, Cong Qing, Cheng Du, Kun Ming, Guang Zhou. (A comment in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or Finnish on the former book's representation of Scandinavia would be perfect, as would a comment in Chinese on the latter's representation of the southernmost provinces of The People's Republic; an essay on either little book in another language, however, would also be welcome.) A comment on Excelling could offer the reader of MM:SC guidance with EL, the final sequence in the Sentence, whose last book, Life, will have at its core the "Interviews with MM" still in progress.
MM:SC's second section will consist of four visual pieces: (19) a computer drawing of Don Quijote by the Chilean artist, Miguel Muñoz, (20) a photomontage portrait of Vergil by the Australian artist, Denis Mizzi, (21) katakana and hiragana versions of MM's name by the Japanese visual poet, Keiichi Nakamura and (22) another version of the name in Arabic calligraphy by the Morrocan writer, Hassan Errezzaki.
MM:SC's third section will consist of two Introductions and a Preface to already published books: (23) Han Wei-min's Chinese "Xu," for the critical edition of Engendering and (24) Flavio Ermini's "Introduzione" to Particolare e Universale: Riflessioni sulla letteratura in Asia, Europea e America; followed by the author's Preface to Every Second.
MM:SC's fourth section will consist of translations: (25) Alessio Rosoldi's Italian version of "Allegory and the Western Epic" and (26) Alexandra Sattler's German version of "Experience in Late Modern British Literature" along with three translations of the full text of "Ten Poems from Second": (27) into French, by Valérie Gauthier; (28) into German, by Alexandra Sattler; (29) into Chinese, by Cai Yuan-huang, as well as (30) Lina Unali's Italian version of its first poem.
MM:SC's fifth section will consist of two interviews: (31) Terry Kennedy's email correspondence, conducted during MM's 1999-2000 trip around the world, and (32) the transcript of Manjushree S. Kumar's television interview for Doordarshan (the national Indian television channel), conducted in Jodhpur during the spring of 2000. This brings the total to 32 contributions by 26 people, not counting La Toan Vinh's frontispiece and Richard Beck's Introduction..

There remain four further desiderata: (1) a translation into Spanish of "Escapade '74-'75" and (2) another into Russian of "What a Life!" (both poems are available in SOLUNA: Collected Earlier Poems); (3) an essay in Thai on Or and (4) a contribution from subequatorial Africa. (If we should have more than four new contributors, the 5 x 6 grid on the cover could be modified to 4 x 8 and include a portrait of the portraitist, La Toan Vinh.) Contributions in languages other than English should be submitted, impeccably proof read, in Microsoft Word, either by email attachment (to <madison_morrison@attglobal.net>) or on CD (to Madison Morrison, P.O. Box. 22-106, Taipei, TAIWAN). We would be delighted to entertain anything new that arrives by the deadline, June 1, 2004.

The next such volume under consideration, MADISON MORRISON: Critical Perspectives (II), is still very much in the planning stage but will have as its core, we hope, five extensive essays about the French, the Italian, the Irish, the Indian and the Chinese influence on Sentence of the Gods.

* * * * *
Note

With the first thirteen books of Sentence of the Gods (Sleep O Light U Need A Revolution Each Second Every Magic Realization Engendering) now complete I've begun to consider the second thirteen as a unit. Reading them in retrograde (Life Excelling This In Divine Or Renewed Happening Possibly All Regarding Exists Her) suggests that the Sentence, in addition to reading forwards (in its entirety), from Sleep to Life, and backwards, from Life to Sleep, can also be read forwards from Sleep to Engendering and backwards from Life to Her. This results in an interesting convergence at the epic's center, in the diptych Engendering Her (or Her Engendering). Engendering in itself displays the forward/backward technique, insofar as the Lun Yu is read forwards in Part I and the Dao De Jing backwards in Part II. Part II is the book's more cosmogonic half, Part I, its more human half. Likewise the first half of Her is modeled on Hesiod's Works and Days, its second half, on his Theogony. Here, however, the symmetry ends, for Her will also include epitomes of the Sentence and renovations of Homer's shield of Achilles and Vergil's shield of Aeneas, which are in turn epitomes of the Iliad and the Aeneid.
This process of epitomization is akin to the process of allegorization. In the Preface to Particular and Universal I express the view that allegory is essential to the epic for the construction of its meaning (its philosophical import, its theological doctrine). For those who wish to devote studious attention to the relationship between epic and allegory, especially as this question manifests itself in Homer and Vergil, Dante and Tasso, Spenser and Milton, Michael Murrin's Veil of Allegory offers an original theory, which his Allegorical Epic then applies to traditional works. Another valuable book in this regard is Mindele Anne Treip's Allegorical Poetics & the Epic.
In her chapter titled "Allegory and 'Idea' in Paradise Lost" she argues that Milton's "subject" is not limited to the "doctrinally instructive or exemplary." This, she says, "is a common misunderstanding, for even the theology in the poem is projected . . . in a variety of non-obvious, oblique ways, as well as through plain statement. The true subject," she continues, "of Milton's poem,
is humanly huge: man's total life, which includes but is not confined to theological beliefs and religious commitments. This largeness is in accord with the traditional encyclopaedic emphasis in epic and with the characteristic emphases of Renaissance epic allegory, which tend to stress the ethical and human aspects of man's life, set within an acknowledged framework of religion. What Milton's subject for heroic song concerns most immediately, to be conveyed through both the rich poetic texture of the background and through the narrative foreground, as also through more shadowed allegorical discourse, is what Tasso expressed as the proper concern of heroical poetry: the whole 'Life of Man.' Or as Milton otherwise puts it in Aeropagitica, 'the state of man as [it] now is'—imperfect, full of potential, fallible, rich. Mythical allusions, simile, verbal reminiscence and other forms of quiet intimation in the poetic subtext, along with the more self-conscious devices of literary allegory . . . converge with verisimilar narrative and shadowed secondary narrative in [a] complex mimesis which can best render such a huge variety of considerations. And it is because of the coherent poetic network of subdued secondary associations plus overt allegory, holding together, across the vast expanses of the poem's time scale and plot, such diverse considerations and various levels of experience as Milton undertakes to project, that we can speak of Milton's total enterprise as allegorical: allegorical in artistry as well as in purpose. The history of allegory shows that allegorical form and idea run together, and that successful allegory in poetry rapidly becomes total or 'global' metaphor.
Sentence of the Gods is a global (or universal or cosmological) epic, which attempts to revive allegory in a modern context. Its subject is "The Life of Man." Read forwards, it begins with the "cosmogonic" Sleep and ends with the "human" Life. (Read backwards it begins with Life and ends with Sleep.) As I say, I've been taking this moment (at which the epic's half finished) to survey its second, as yet unfinished, half (six of whose books—All, Happening, Or, Divine, In, Excelling—have nevertheless been published already).
To grasp better the meaning of individual titles in the Sentence we may break up the longer sequences of books into random trilogies: Life Excelling This, for example, or Excelling This In. By doing so one can see that the "sentence" not only reads continuously but also goes by fits and starts. I'm especially interested in the titles of those trilogies that have not yet been completed, for example, All Regarding Exists, in which the last two books remain to be written; or All Possibly Happening, in which the middle book remains to be written. This propadeutic enables one to see more clearly what Possibly can possibly mean, or how Regarding, as a title, is to be understood. The sentences within the Sentence also help to clarify our understanding of the work, for just as Sleep O Light U Need A Revolution Each Second is a sentence, so is Life Excelling This In Renewed Or Divine Happening Possibly All Regarding Exists. Several trilogies within the Sentence themselves make little sentences: Engendering Her Exists, for example, or U Light O, and there are also slightly larger sentences (such as U Need A Revolution) and slightly shorter ones (Regarding Exists). These highlightings of mine (as I'm sure you've noticed) are a deliberate form of allegorization (in the double sense of creating an allegory as one composes the epic and of producing an allegoresis as one reads the finished product (or its parts)..
What I'm doing here might be regarded in relation to what Dante attempts in his Letter to Can Grande, or Tasso in his Allegoria (his commentary on the Gerusalemme Liberata) or Milton in his "Arguments" (his prose summaries that preface the individual books of Paradise Lost). Spenser (so I maintain in "Allegory and the Western Epic") may be doing something similar in his Mutabilitie Cantos (as well as more obviously in his Letter to Ralegh). Would that we had Vergil's notebooks or his own allegoresis of the allegorical epic that he wrote.

 

SENTENCE OF GOD

For Order : MADISON MORRISON

P.O Box 22-106 , TAIPEI, TAIWAN

MADISON MORRISON By LATOAN VINH

Marker on 8.1/2 X 11 Paper

2001

Peter Carravetta wrote:

I am creating the category of the planetary poet (to distinguish it from the "universal").

    When I began categorizing Sentence of the Gods, I called it a cosmological or cosmographical epic
but soon discovered that "cosmology" and "cosmography" were not in the average reader's vocabulary, and
so I began calling it a "universal" epic instead. As you have pointed out, "universal" smacks of a neo-classical,
philosophical intention not altogether appropriate. Accordingly, I think that you are right to replace the term
"universal" with the term "planetary" (as in Scenes from the Planet, a collection of mine that includes five
books from APHRODITE that take up, respectively, Scandinavia, Arizona, China, Thailand and Italy).
    I have never felt myself to be expatriated, partly because, with CNN, The International Herald Tribune
and the Internet, one lives in the same information realm with everyone else, partly because the empire of
popular American culture has such a fearsome reach and impact. (If this seems hard to believe, you should ask
Chinese, Korean, Filipino or Thai kids why they play basketball and why they dress like hip-hop stars. "Kobe"
is the most popular name for junior high school boys in Taiwan, and Beyoncé will be dancing tonight in every
go-go bar from Bangkok to Pattaya, from Manila to Angeles City.)

    At my age I cannot pretend to be a good source of information for identifying other American writers who
have chosen to live not in the USA but elsewhere on the planet. Since you have mentioned Cid Corman,
however, I will speak about him for a moment. Ironically, it was Flavio Ermini who introduced me to Cid.
I corresponded with him for a decade before paying a visit, for the first time, in Kyoto, on my second, 1999-
2000, trip around the world. (The first had taken me eastward to India as a visiting Fulbright lecturer, and I
had completed the circuit by way of Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei and San Francisco; earlier I had spent two
years in Taiwan, half way round the world, but returned without circling the globe.)
    Like many of my literary friends, Cid and I had virtually nothing in common, but we nonetheless agreed to
meet again on my third trip around the world. He was a lyric poet; I am an epic writer; he, very subjective,
I, largely objective. Despite his having lived most of his life in Japan, he was a stay-at-home, whereas I am
basically a traveler. He had his very specific Black Mountain lineage, whereas I have always been much more
eclectic. Cid deliberately shunned the Japanese, whereas I have deliberately absorbed the traditions in most
of the places where I have found myself (latterly in India and China, N.E. and S.E. Asia but also, much earlier,
in continental Europe, where I lived for some time in France, Germany and Greece).
    Considering that we met face to face only twice, both times in Kyoto, Cid and I were fairly good friends.
He wrote a blurb for the critical edition of Engendering and at least glanced at my other books. He was so
impecunious that he wanted me to order his books from a dealer in New England. I do not buy anyone
else's books, unless he buys mine, so I have actually read very little of Corman's voluminous work. He had
a table in the dining room of the Kyoto house, 9 feet by 6 feet, piled to the ceiling with unpublished poems
in what looked like a state of considerable disarray; when Philip Larkin boasted of having written 27 poems
in one year, Cid said, "I write 27 poems every day." He was extremely prolific.
    Cid told me that he did not speak Japanese, because he was worried about corrupting his American  idiom.
The American critic Taylor Mignon, who reviews books for The Japan Times (<poetrymignon@hotmail.com>)
would be a good source of information here, as would Shuko Miyatake <gogo@wc4.so-net.ne.jp>). When
I was in Tokyo to give a reading at Ben's Café, Taylor told me that Cid watched NBA games on TV so as not
to lose his American identity. For many years he made a living by running an ice cream parlor in Kyoto.
    Incidentally, there is a large scene of "planetary" writers in Tokyo that Taylor and/or Hillel Wright (for whom
I have no email address) could tell you about (the latter's postal address is 187, Imainishimachi / Nakaharaku /
Kawasakishi 211-0066 / JAPAN, should you want to contact him). Hillel and his wife, Shiori Tsuchiya, have
produced an anthology of writing by (mostly) Americans who live in Tokyo; I have a poem, with Chinese
translation, in a similar anthology that Taylor and Hillel produced.

    If you begin your chapter with Corman, the transition line to MM might be "The life of the life of the party,"
a phrase that we lifted from a longer blurb of his about Engendering (a book that incorporates Cid's, and my,
favorite Chinese classic, the Tao Te Ching (Cid translated the Lao Tzu) plus the Confucian Analects, for as the
Japanese curriculum had earlier incorporated Confucian texts through memorization, so I embedded the Analects
in Engendering). The Taiwanese edition of this book, you might be interested to know, includes an Introduction
by a Taiwanese scholar of western literature, Han Wei-min; an Afterward by an American Sinologist, Frank W.
Stevenson; a cover by a Taiwanese artist that incorporates a Japanese design; and a picture of me on the back
taken in the parlor of Richard Beck's house in Norman, Oklahoma, the locale of the book itself. Speaking of
the planetary, its flap includes an excerpt from a letter by Kofi A. Annan, The Secretary General of the United
Nations, commenting on Scenes from the Planet, as well as a comment on Particular and Universal by the
first secretary of the current Taiwanese president, along with another comment on East and West in MM by the
former Taiwanese president, Lee Teng-hui, who has degrees from Taiwan, Japan and The United States. There
are blurbs on the back cover by Han Wei-min, Stevenson and an eighteen-year-old Chinese student who had just
returned from a summer in Boston. Cid's blurb on the front cover is rather nice, since, as you yourself observed,
Hermes, the original "scripting nomad," is my personal divinity, and the obliquely autobiographical Engendering
occurs in HERMES, the central sequence of the Sentence (which is "planetary" in more than one sense!).

P. S. I will paste in a quotation (supplied by Ron Phelps) that I thought you might find useful.

John Updike: "In the era of jet planes and electronic communication, a writer in gathering truth
                                should set foot on as much of the globe

as he can."

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