The Ghosts – Notes from a Field Study

By Ken Lauter

THE GHOSTS – NOTES FROM A FIELD STUDY
Poems by Ken Lauter

Book Description

In The Ghosts an anonymous anthropologist somehow discovers the land of a tribe of ghosts. Living with them for a year or so, he learns their language, culture, history and institutions, their hopes, dreams, emotions, virtues, and flaws. His primary informant among the ghosts is a beautiful female spirit, and he promptly falls in love with her, thereby sacrificing scientific objectivity but gaining deeper insight into ghost psychology and society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 29, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462814206

Ken Lauter

Ken Lauter studied with Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate 2006-07) at the University of Michigan, and his work has been compared to Robert Lowell’s. Distinguished poet William Meredith has said that Ken’s poetry displays “a splendid and various gift.” His previous books are: The Other Side, Before the Light (both from BkMk Press, University of Missouri at Kansas City), The Ghosts – Notes from a Field Study, Songs from Walnut Canyon, Grand Canyon Days, Searching for Mr. Stevens, The Structure of the Body, and First Kingdoms – Poems from a Vanishing Landscape (all from Xlibris). He has also written several plays, including The Dancing Apsárás, or Captain Willard’s Blues, a prequel/sequel to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He has received a Hopwood Award for poetry, an American Academy of Poets Prize, and a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship. He has taught literature and creative writing at four universities and also worked as a mayor’s aide, a university administrator, and a grass-roots environmental activist. Ken is married to poet and neuroscientist Dr. Judy Lauter, author of How Is Your Brain Like a Zebra? — A New Human Neurotypology and A Year of Haiku (both from Xlibris). They currently live in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Book preview

Copyright © 2009 by Ken Lauter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/15/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

581039

Contents

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

Their Origins

Their Transformation

Their Powers

Their Metaphor

Their Hymn

Their Confession

PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS

Their Moods

Their Nostalgia

Their Psychodynamics

Their Daydreams

Their Mass Delusions

Their Raison d’Etre

Their Superstition

Their Worst Nightmare

A Ghost Affidavit

TRIBAL OVERVIEW

Their Language

Their Burial Customs

Their Heaven and Hell

Their Food

Their Sewer System

Their Road System

Their Dwellings

Their Landscape

Their Meteorology

Their Seasons

Their Sense of Time

Their Names

Their Harlots

Their Sex Life

Their Concept of Love

Their Wedding Rings

Two Ghost Songs

Marriage Among The Ghosts

SOCIOLOGY

Their Wars

Their Police

Their Judicial System

Their Welfare System

Their Games

Their Jobs

Their Advertising

Their Corporations

Their Manufacturing

Their Politics

Their Taxes

Their Drug Problem

Their Racism

Their Teachers

Their Dress Code

Their Fashion Shows

Their Media

Their Pets

Their Population

Informant Profile

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Their Haute Cuisine

Their Literature & Wisdom

Their National Heroes

Their Lies

Their Dramatic Arts

Their Pornography

Their Painters

Their Beauty

Their Money

Their Science

Their View of the Book of Job

Their Manners

Their New Year’s Ball

THE DEPARTURE OF THE GHOSTS

The Departure of the Ghosts

Endnote

: the Genesis of

The Ghosts

DEDICATION

for Richard Stang—scholar, teacher, friend

and, as always, for Judy

whose expertise in translating ghostspeak

was indispensable

Could anything be more miraculous than an authentic ghost? The English Doctor Johnson longed all his life to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane and thence to church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind’s eye as well as the body’s, look round him to that full