Robert Bringhurst:

"...speaking is much older and more universal than writing. It seems to me a better venue, much of the time, for the evanescent, mutable agelessness that is apt to distinguish a poem.....It makes good sense to me that a book about oral literature should be spoken before it is written, and written to be spoken, not just read."



*~



"They went to sleep .

Then he skinned the child, starting at the feet,

and crawled inside the skin.

He took the baby's place."



(p.284, Raven Travelling in "Being in Being", trans. R. Bringhurst)