'If the Tao and the Farmers' Almanac produced an offspring', notes Lisa Jarnot, 'it would be Whit Griffin's Pentateuch.' 'A new poet versed in the old lore', Whit Griffin's poems perform an alchemy of word and world: 'Riddle, oracle, proverb, divination, the poems remind us of so much we have forgotten and so much we never knew. It's as if the words were written back before the world began and or were found just after the world had ended - captured now within the pages of a book that has apparently been lost for centuries - opened here in your hand: an almanac of ancient rhymes' (John Phillips). 'From historical references to chance remembrances of bits from many other sources, to what the poet has invented. There are smiles, outright laughter and far deeper wisdom' (Theodore Enslin).