A shaman and visionarynot a poet in any ordinary senseMaria Sabina lived out her life in the Oaxacan mountain village of Huautla de Jimenez, and yet her words, always sung or spoken, have carried far and wide, a principal instance and a powerful reminder of how poetry can arise in a context far removed from literature as such. Seeking cures through languagewith the help of Psilocybe mushrooms, said to be the source of language itselfshe was, as Henry Munn describes her, "a genius who] emerges from the soil of the communal, religious-therapeutic folk poetry of a native Mexican campesino...