'In the green days of youth-in another life and in a far land-Jack Dann was invited to participate in Native American religious ceremonies and culture. And in that far country of the past Jack experienced numinous moments and small revelations that changed his life and his art. Some of those distant moments and visceral wisdoms are encapsulated in Poems From a White Heart…a lifetime’s distillation of poems birthed in the ice and fire of a lost America.
'As he writes in his introduction, “During that initial white hot time of exploration and revelation, I asked a medicine woman to vet the early poems that now make up the spine of this book. I had wanted to publish them in magazines and literary quarterlies, but did not feel comfortable doing so without her permission. She read the poems…and gave me her blessing. And over the long years that followed-long after I had lost touch with those who conducted and participated in the ceremonies I describe-I continued to write poems for this book.”
'Songs From a White Heart is a journey grounded in intensely personal revelations that inspired Jack’s poetry, short stories, and novels such as Bad Medicine, which Locus Magazine described as showing us “that true magics, supernatural moments of both grief and joy, can be found in life itself. You just have to know where to look, and how to invoke them-and Jack Dann is an expert at such things.”' (Publication summary)
