Etymologicon is a collection of 64 poems in quatrain form, initially

based on the multiple meanings of a single word: quarry. The first

sixteen poems grew organically out of the first one—“Quarry”—and in

the collection, they are every fourth poem, starting with the fourth.

The title of the collection refers to a treatise in word origins. The

structure of many of the poems is directly based on the central premise

of the title, and the results resemble a dig in a vast quarry, an excavation

of historical artifacts that surface in multiple layers of meaning.