5 - The anthropologist’s uses of myth

Summary

There is only one poem in the 1972 Faber and Faber revised edition of Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, the edition used for the Collected Poems, that has never been collected in a US edition: ‘Crowcolour’. The 1972 Faber edition ‘Publisher’s Note’ states: ‘This new edition of Crow contains seven new poems which did not appear in the original edition. They are: . . .’ Since all seven of the new poems had appeared in the 1971 first American edition, the note gives the impression that the only difference between the 1970 Faber first edition and the 1972 augmented Faber are the new poems. The note does not mention that one poem, ‘Crowcolour’, was deleted from the 1970 Faber first edition before the seven new poems were added to the American edition.

Crow poems were appearing regularly in American magazines in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and ‘Crowcolour’ was one of them, published on its own on 14 November 1970 in the New Yorker, its first and last US appearance. The poem is so understated, slipped between the monumental twins of ‘Crow Improvises’ and ‘Crow’s Battle Fury’ in Crow, that one would not notice its disappearance. ‘Crowcolour’ also has the fewest words of any poem in the Faber first edition — thirty-three (‘Glimpse’ has thirty-four).