Gnomonology: A Handbook of Systems by Howard McCord Sand Dollar Press, 1971 I can think of no other chapbook more fitting to begin a cataloging of Western American poetry chapbooks from the 1960’s and 70’s than Howard McCord’s Gnomonology (Sand Dollar Press, 1971). While a text about texts it is also a book contemplating books as tools, weighing their value vs purpose through the woven threads of history. Titles and authors of many books are interspersed throughout McCord’s journey-like treatise, from the classics of both east and west to mystical texts, scientific literature and books ruminating upon the ancients, myth and prehistoric art. Geology, geography, biology, economics, law, culture, all are interwoven. A side trail leads us to the history of the early American West considering ecology, while the next switchback takes us into realms of visionary perception through modern art, magic and the philosophies of the Sumerians and Greeks. Basho’s Narrow Road rests atop the Anarchist Cookbook alongside Goethe’s Theory of Color among the multitude of books taken down from McCord’s quantum bookshelf. Although written in free verse the lines are an amalgam of both science and art, of curation and reading, an alchemy of words, a labyrinth of signposts and doorways. McCord uses Chinese ideograms, drawn arrows, diagrams, tiny drawings (proto-emoticons?), boxes and underlining to emphasize and highlight his text which results in a unique and original typography and layout leaving the reader to question: What are all these energies from all these words, symbols and languages? The chapbook concludes with two letters written to Howard in response to his poem. The first, by author/publisher and bookstore owner Gus Blaidell of Albuquerque New Mexico, magnifies McCord’s text, amplifying it. The later, by Beat poet, writer, teacher and activist Gary Snyder, questions McCord’s text, yet despite Snyder’s trickster fox criticism, his letter acts as the perfect counterbalance to McCord’s tome of tomes, as if at the end of the text we are watching (visually, as well as mentally and spiritually) the snake eat its own tail, that image well-known from Jungian lore. Howard McCord is an American poet and writer of the late 20th and early 21st century who is sometimes grouped with the Beat Poets of the 1960’s and has had a number of exceptional chapbooks published in the 1960’s and 1970’s along with many other acclaimed books of poetry, essays and fiction. Many of his works have been translated into French. His new book of poems Ebb & Flow is forthcoming in 2021. Visit Howard McCord's Website

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