Publisher's Synopsis
Nearly all of the poems in this volume areqqaygaang, narrative poems set in the Haida mythtime of long ago. One story, “The Names of Their Gambling Sticks,” is aqqayaagaang, a story that juxtaposes mythtime and historical time and is the property of a Haida family. Each poem creatively enacts a myth in a way that illuminates and celebrates the traditional world of the Haidas and reveals Ghandl's own acute sense of the foibles and great potential of all human beings. Meticulously and sensitively translated and annotated by Robert Bringhurst, these stories have finally been given the attention they deserve.