Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft - Softcover

Pendell, Dale

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1562790692 ISBN 13: 9781562790691

Publisher: Mercury House, 1994

Synopsis

An epic poem on plant humours, an abstruse alchemic treatise, an experiential narrative jigsaw puzzle, a hip and learned wild-nature reference text, a comic paen to cosmic consciousness, an ecological handbook, a dried-herb pastiche, a counterculture encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore.—Allen Ginsberg

"Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic poet and the shaman."—Terence McKenna

Also available by Dale Pendell: Pharmako/Gnosis: Plant Teachers and the Poison Path (Mercury House), 1-56279-104-4

About this title

About the Author:

Dale Pendell is a poet, software engineer, and longtime student of ethnobotany. His poetry has appeared in many journals, and he was the founding editor of Kuksu: Journal of Backcountry Writing. His work appeared in Entheogens and the Future of Religion. He has led workshops on ethnobotany and ethnopoetics for the Naropa Institute and the Botanical Preservation Corps.

Review:

"Dale Pendell reactivates the ancient connection between the bardic poet and the shaman. His Pharmako/Poeia is a litany to the secret plant allies that have always accompanied us along the alchemical trajectory that leads to a new and yet authentically archaic future."
—Terence McKenna, author of True Hallucinations

"Much of our life-force calls upon the plant world for support, in medicines and in foods, as both allies and teachers. Pendell provides a beautifully crafted bridge between these two worlds. The magic he shares is that the voices are spoken and heard both ways; we communicate with plants and they with us. This book is a moving and poetic presentation of this dialogue."
—Dr. Alexander T. Shulgin, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Public Health

"Pharmako/Poeia is an epic poem on plant humours, an abstruse alchemic treatise, an experiential narrative jigsaw puzzle, a hip and learned wild-nature reference text, a comic paean to cosmic consciousness, an ecological handbook, a dried-herb pastiche, a counterculture encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore that cuts through the present ‘conservative’ war-on-drugs psychobabble."
—Allen Ginsberg, poet

"Dale Pendell’s remarkable book will make it impossible to ever again underestimate the most unprepossessing plant. This compendium of how-to-get-high-by-eating-your-lawn ethnological data is mind-boggling, useful, and serves as a fine end run around the guardians of ‘official’ consciousness."
—Peter Coyote, actor

About this edition

• Publisher: Mercury House
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1562790692
• ISBN 13: 9781562790691
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304