Art Goodtimes is legendary along the Southern Rockies as poet, performer, ritualist, Rainbow Tribe, and Green Party activist. In her introduction, 'deep ecologist' Dolores LaChapelle describes him as part of the bardic tradition ""which shows us how nature and human consciousness are but different aspects of one consciousness. Bards put mind and body together within the whole of nature."" In ""As if the World Really Mattered"", we find poems that joyfully expound on the natural world and our relationship to it. Lyrical but root essential, Goodtimes speaks as one of the ancient storytellers - wise and sly. These poems could have been sung underground in the caves of Lascaux or atop a rock in a sacred grove. Political at heart, Goodtimes opposes the alienation of industrial culture from our interdependent life on earth. Much of his work has only been published in chapbooks, broadsides, 'bundles', and various ephemera. This is his first major collection.