The Lacquered Planchette

This is a collection of poems, many of them dramatic monologues, all of them character studies in one sense or another, which examine through various voices the point where personality, history, and culture intersect in the lives of people who are largely unaccounted for in the conventional historical narrative. Some correspond to actual figures whose influence on our contemporary lives is misunderstood or forgotten altogether. Others are fictional or composite inventions of the poet intended to represent a particular, often unusual point of view. A few are attempts to extrapolate a narrative from the details of an existing work of visual art or from the epic literature of Japan. Read as a single manuscript, the voices employed are meant to suggest an ongoing discussion of universal human themes as seen through the eyes of history. The role of Asia in this discussion is central to the poet's world-view.