The Mundus

A lost masterpiece of visual poetry and the Black Arts Movement that created an entirely new sonic and visual landscape

N.H. Pritchard's magnum opus, The Mundus is a work that is both visual and poetic, literary and mystical. It was composed between 1965 until at least July 1971: a six-year period during which the author refined and reworked its pages, seeking out new literary forms alongside personal transcendence. Despite its ambitions and grand scope, this masterpiece has gone unpublished for over 50 years. Subtitled "a novel with voices," The Mundus combines Pritchard's earlier poetic innovations with his growing interest in theosophy. Appropriately, this lost masterpiece represents some of Pritchard's most challenging work, with the text proceeding in small leaps and sublime fractures, stuttering across the page with sonic and visual momentum as it threads through an immersive, textual mist composed solely of the letter "o." The Mundus finds Pritchard at his most radical and revelatory. An early pillar of Black poetics and a world unto itself, The Mundus must be sounded out not only with the mind but also with the mouth, body and soul. Norman Henry (N.H.) Pritchard (1939-96) studied at New York University and Columbia University. His work has been published in two collections: The Matrix Poems: 1960-1970 (1970) and Eecchhooeess (1971). Pritchard taught poetry at the New School for Social Research and was a poet-in-residence at Friends Seminary.