The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War

By: Christopher Merrill

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Synopsis: Using several ageless questions-"Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we do?"-as his point of departure, award-winning poet Christopher Merrill explores the related issues of terror, modernity, tradition, and epochal transformation. In three extended essays, Merrill observes the performance of a banned ritual in the Malaysian province of Kelatan; traces Saint-John Perse's epic voyage from Beijing to Ulan Bator in 1921, and relates it to the China of today; and embarks on a trip across the Levant in 2007 in the wake of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Merrill asserts that it is in this trinity of human actions-ceremony, expedition, war: all devised to keep terror at bay-that history is formed, and that the technological, political, environmental, and social changes we are witnessing now presage the end of one order and the creation of another.