Dropping the Bow: Poems of Ancient India
TRANSLATOR
Andrew Schelling
Two thousand years have passed since the first of these poems were composed. A new introduction prefaces this expanded edition of Andrew Schellingâs remarkable translations.
Reviews
âRefined, intense, wise, stirring, immediate, subtle, all the charmed qualities gather in Dropping the Bow. These translations are precious jewels. Like the erotic moods they investigate, these versions shimmer and startle with a palpable desire to be heard, and a mystical sense of impermanence. This is a transmission of a vital, extraordinary tradition.â
âAnne Waldman
Andrew Schelling, born 14 January 1953 at St. Elizabethâs Hospital, Washington D.C. The 1970s and â80s he spent in Northern California: studied ecology of mind with Gregory Bateson and poetry with Norman O. Brown. Took up Sanskrit language; developed wilderness skills in Sierra Nevada and Coast Range mountains. In 1990 moved to Colorado to take work at Naropa University, where he teaches poetry and Sanskrit. Among twenty-odd titles are From the Arapaho Songbook and The Facts at Dog Tank Spring. Another book, Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture, is a folkloric account of linguistics, old time stories, poets, and cattle rustling in California. Besides Mirabai, he has seven books of translation from Indiaâs old languages, most recently Songs of the Sons & Daughters of Buddha, with Anne Waldman. Schelling lives in the âmiddle mountains,â between the high plains and Coloradoâs Indian Peaks.