First fire: Central and South American Indian poetry

by Hugh Fox (Editor)

This wonderful First Fire by Hugh Fox, is a book about Central and South American Indian Poetry. "In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ancient Indian cultures of Central and South America were largely obliterated by the conquistadores. The Spanish destroyed the sacred books of the Aztecs and Mayas, dismantled the priesthoods that had preserved and interpreted the hieroplyphic writings, and enforced a total conversion to Roman Catholicism. Those who clung to the old gods and idols were put to death. Fist Fire enables the reader to penetrate the pre-Columbian mind through text and tales that did survive the Conquest."

454 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1978

About the author

Hugh Bernard Fox Jr. (February 12, 1932 – September 4, 2011) was a writer, novelist, poet and anthropologist and one of the founders (with Ralph Ellison, Anais Nin, Paul Bowles, Joyce Carol Oates, Buckminster Fuller and others) of the Pushcart Prize for literature. He has been published in numerous literary magazines and was the first writer to publish a critical study of Charles Bukowski.

Fox was born and raised in Chicago as a devout Catholic, but converted to Judaism in later life. He received a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a professor at Michigan State University in the Department of American Thought and Language from 1968 until his retirement in 1999.[5] Hugh Fox died on September 4, 2011 in East Lansing, MI.

Fox was the author of over sixty-two books, including six books on anthropology. He wrote over fifty-four books on poetry and many volumes on short fiction, and published many novels. Fox also wrote a number of books on pre-Columbian American cultures and catastrophism. Some of these works were labeled in the pseudoarchaeological category, such as his book Gods of the Cataclysm: A Revolutionary Investigation of Man and his Gods Before and After the Great Cataclysm (1976). Some of his books with these themes have been compared to the work of Ignatius Donnelly.

His book Gods of the Cataclysm received a number of positive reviews. Editor Curt Johnson praised the book claiming “Hugh Fox’s Gods of the Cataclysm...ought to be required reading for cultural historians of all disciplines.”[7]

The Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA published Way, Way Off the Road: The Memoirs of an Invisible Man by Hugh Fox with an introduction by Doug Holder in 2006. This book recounts Fox's life and the people he knew from his extensive associations with the "Small Press" marketplace over the years, including Charles Bukowski, A.D. Winans, Sam Cornish, Len Fulton, and numerous other people.

Fox's final works were:

The Dream of the Black Topaze Chamber (Skylight Press, 2011)
Reunion (Luminist Press, 2011)
Who, Me? A Memoir (Sunbury Press, 2011)
Immortal Jaguar (Skylight Press, 2011)
The Lord Said Unto Satan (Post Mortem Press, 2011)
Depths & Dragons (Skylight Press, 2010)
Peace/La Paix: Ballades et contes en quete verite (Higganum Hill, 2008)
The Complete Poetry of Hugh Fox 1966-2007 (World Audience, 2008)
Defiance (Higganum Hill, 2007)
Opening the Door to French Film (World Audience, 2007)