Seattle Small Books Company
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Click on the book titles for more information on each book.
• The Winnowing Fan
• Ritter's Crime
• On Ancient Paths
• Click here to read On Ancient Paths digital version
Seattle Small Books Company
Books >> The Winnowing Fan • Ritter's Crime • On Ancient Paths
The Winnowing Fan
James M. Brantingham
This lovely playful book takes exquisite care with words and images, giving us one quiet moment hung upon another until the seas of its imagination stretch blue or dark before us. Brantingham's translations create cutting verses sharper than butchers' knives, and he plays satirically with academic speculation about a supposed fragment from paleo-literature. Read this book for its spare lines, where Eden, Attica, and an abandoned cabin somewhere in the western hills become one, and references to orchestral music match the music of his words.
- Linda J. Clifton, Ph.D.
Founding editor, Crab
Creek Review
A winnowing fan is used to separate the chaff from the
grain. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is instructed by Circe to find the seer
Tiresias in the Underworld. Tiresias tells Odysseus to take an oar from
his ship and to walk inland until he finds a "land that knows nothing of
the sea", where the oar would be mistaken for a winnowing fan. At this point, he is to offer a sacrifice
to Poseidon, and then his journeys would be over.
While studying classical literature at Gonzaga University, I met a young
waitress in a local pub who asked me what I was studying. I said, "Latin"
and she said, "Whats that?" And thats how the title poem got
its beginning.