James C. McCullagh

The Archetype of the Gun, modeled on the dramatic structure and tone of an epic poem, examines in images and metaphor the psychological, religious, and mythological nature of the gun in America.

The archetypal elements in Set Pieces of the Feminine float just below the surface. The book's gang of players, many of them men, who as the protagonist in "Love as Calligraphy" moves "roughly to her sex" but is "slowed by a voice/cautioning him that the sweet/path is through the pictographs/climbing from her low hem/to her girdled neck." Poetry is the language of slowing down, moving inside and staying with the image. This book does just that.

This was my first book of poetry based on four years in the U.S. Navy, most of them in the South China Sea and the Tonkin Gulf during the run-up to the Vietnam War.