Where None Before Hath Stood

the long version

Free verse throughout, divided into four sections called "days" . It is the poetry mate to the prose of Jamestown Narratives, both books dealing with the first decade of the United States 1607-1617. Nine excellent original pen illustrations by Marc Castelli. 64pp or about 650 lines of poetry. Beautifully hardbound and printed. An outstanding edition. There is a tragi-comic air to the whole work. The author states in a short jacket blurb, "When was language, the vehicle of culture, first translatable (in Jamestown), and when was it possible to know?" and so in a series of encounters between Red Americans and White Europeans on the banks of the James River of Virginia verbal exchanges result in bizarre misunderstandings both sweet and bitter, all based squarely on the early accounts of colonists Archer, Percy, Smith, and others.