AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE describes, in a lyrically charged magical realist narrative, the journey of an unnamed man, catalyzed by war and grief, as he walks to Antarctica, impelled toward the restorative idea of the stark earthly beauty and purity represented by Antarctica, and toward the love that he knows will be awaiting him, as his beloved is making a different, parallel journey. Their love, and the creative and magical power it embodies, is both encouraging and sustaining. The journey, born of a desperate compulsion, is carried out through acts of will, grit, and openness to experience. It takes the protagonist deep into beauty, as well as evil. Both the protagonist's journey and his beloved's fulfill a desire to actively re-envision and recreate reality, to heal and be healed through art and love.

Advance Praise for AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE:

Readers will be spellbound by Clif Mason's bold, courageous, and mesmerizing novel in verse, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE. This visionary masterpiece depicts a world much like ours in which "No one claimed to want war / and yet everyone had a hand in it." Both an elegy for the burning, violence-ravaged earth and a praise song for the magnificence of its creatures, oceans, cosmos, and art, Mason follows two voices-a man's and his beloved's-as they communicate, while apart, through an ebony bead created by the woman. In language as marvelous as the tale being told, Mason never flinches from scenes of destruction in "the kingdom of flame / & annihilation." Neither does he cease from celebrating the power of the word-spells of poetry in which it becomes possible to participate in creation rather than destruction. In lines such as: "Every morning the rivers / forgot their names / so I gave them new ones" and "I didn't ask others / the nature of my task. / I simply sang threads of light / into night's dream ocean," this incantatory poem brilliantly reminds us of the holy, healing powers of art.

Judith Sornberger, author of Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art and I Call to You from Time

In this wide-ranging and dream-like poem, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH'S DARK FACE, the speaker confronts the harsh realities of our world while on a quest to connect with love and beauty, with the goal of re-directing reality. War, violence, and deaths are expressed in surreal language. The diction is entrancing and images are striking, such as in "Trees galloped,/ a hundred horses, in the wind," and "Always the sound of water, the purl/ & purr of its flowing/ its carving and reaching," along with "We must count/ backwards,/ age after age,/ as wars batter the lands/ & their peoples,/ blasting into nothingness/ homes & stores,/ schools/ & hospitals,/ blasting bodies/ into rags/ & shreds." Like Odysseus, the protagonist experiences multiple trials along his journey; but ultimately, re-connection to love wins out. Mason is a seasoned wordsmith well worth traveling along with.

Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet 2013-2018, Author of Inventions of Love and Feeding the Fire