North Country Medicine

Albert Glover
Canton, New York

Nos. 1–6; Bulletins, nos. 1–3, and a “Christmas Letter” (1971)

North Country Medicine Bulletin 1 (n.d.). This issue was sent to Seamus Cooney and is postmarked August 17, 1972.

In the fall of 1970 I purchased a Gestetner 460 mimeograph machine, an electronic stencil maker, and a black IBM Selectric II typewriter with money provided by the Ford Foundation via the Dean’s Office at St. Lawrence University. With this equipment I planned to participate in “the mimeograph revolution” which had been underway for more than a decade. The first project I undertook was an occasional newsletter called North Country Medicine which appeared in six issues during the year. Printed in black ink on 8½ x 11 white duplicating paper, each issue was between 7 and 9 pages, folded in half, stapled, and mailed out to thirty or so friends.

A North Country Medicine mailing envelope.

Issue 1, “in the present cosmic epoch there is a creation of continuity,” contains a long passage from Briffault’s The Mothers which begins: “Words, then, are primitively regarded as much more than mere signs, and the power of speech is far from being but a means of communicating ideas….” The issue also contains Gary Snyder’s “A Curse / On the Men in Washington, Pentagon” and Suhrawardi’s “The Red Intelligence” translated by Michael Bylebyl.

Issue 2, “to a multiplicity of ways & a singleness of mind,” featured a reprint of Hans Guterbok’s “The Hittite Version of the Hurrian Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners of Hesiod” and R. Cumberland’s translation of “Sanconiatho’s Phoenician History” from the first book of Eusebius’s De Praeparations Evangelica.

Issue 4, “A Companion for Lovers,” presents Suhrawardi’s text “On the Essence of Love” translated by Michael Bylebyl.

Issue 5, “scholarship is what art and culture build on,” contains Don Makosky’s translation of Karl Meuli’s “Herodotus’ Account of Scythian Shamans” from Scythica (1935) and Anselm Hollo’s poem “that old sauna high.”

Issue 6, “Seven Akkadian Cylinder Seals at the Buffalo Museum of Natural History,” transcribed by Albert Glover with a cover image by Guy Berard, was never distributed.

North Country Medicine 6 (January 1972). This issue was never distributed.

Issues 1–5 were later gathered and bound together in wrappers printed by Roger Bailey from a photograph by Guy Berard. Very few made.

In addition to the newsletter, I printed and distributed three “Bulletins” and a “Christmas Letter” in the same format. Bulletin 1: two poems by John Clarke and an advertisement for A Curriculum of the Soul. Bulletin 2: “WEKWOM TEKS-“ a short dialog on etymology and language by “Jacob Lititz” (Jake Leed). Bulletin 3: a few sections from Loba by Diane di Prima. “Christmas Letter, 1971,” a reprint of a letter from D. H. Lawrence to Gordon Campbell, dated December 19, 1914.

— Albert Glover, Canton, New York, 2016