ON FRIENDSHIP is a book about the origins of consciousness and the place that friendship possesses in that process. As early human beings advanced out of Africa and slowly populated our earth they did so in terms of walking. Friendship, more than any other emotional experience-rather than kinship-was central in that development of incipient awareness. The practice of walking was a condition that was profoundly inherent in the early composition of psyche and this book presents four Walks-in Greece, the Windward Isles, western India, and New England-as representative of such apprehension. Walking is here portrayed as a transcendental and philosophical activity and as a constitutive source-through the work of apperception-of human understanding. It is the development of friendship that transformed the experience of the pedestrian from one of the most intrinsic sources of the human psyche into a situation of moral sentience.
This is a book is secretly about love. It doesn't say so, directly, yet it leads us through its many forms using an inspired choice of words: "Scary thought, trains and girlfriends." And when someone leaves a relationship: "Emptiness reliable as a broken bone" followed by: "I am the hollow reflection of your departure." Son of a preacher man and a piano player, growing up in a small town in Central Texas, his dad reading Robert Frost to him, his mother playing Offenbach's Barcarolle which made him cry, acting in one act plays, playing in the All State Band, breaking his leg in football, getting jilted by a cheerleader, he had enough experience at 17 to already be a poet. Yet he waited until middle age, rocked by crisis, reaching for understanding, poetry seemed the smart thing to do. The sensual moments in this book simply rise off the page: "You collected my tears in the teacup of your collarbone." and "It has taken a long time to get here past failures at love, at marriage, but sometimes, after all, there is this accident of grace." Poetry should scare us a little. What poetry affirms, good poetry, is that on the other side of a scare there often surfaces a thread which keeps us pressing forward through angst and the paralyses of sorrow. That life-rope we seek is affirmed by beauty and the rigorous pursuit of truth: In "Fear and Resilience" the protagonist, in a pit of worry, remembers and recovers to her ear her mother's voice which calms the fright she was facing. That discovery could not have happened were it not for facing the problem head on. As Robert Frost says, "The best way out is always through." Watts brings many talents. His subjects range from a birdhouse to a mirror in the hall, each approached with well-trained eyes and a reverence for the complicated journeys of the human spirit. How else could the right words come to interrogate the classical themes of love, loss and mortality? It took great courage to place himself within the spirit of a dying friend and record the illuminations found there as he did in the meditative and unique "Death Sequence." Something new came from that.Thoughtful reflection guided by craft; Watts is well-equipped. Yet, one more quality is essential: a depth of spirit one gains by years of what Socrates calls, "The Examined Life." Being unafraid to approach our angels and our demons candidly as Watts courageously does in this collection, pays off. As Gary Snyder affirms, "To the real work/. . 'What is to be done'."
Shards of Time is a poetic meditation on the four states of mind that shape our lives: desire, doubt, stagnation, and realization. These states are not separate but intimately intertwined in the tapestry of time. Within these pages, readers will encounter the raw emotions of ambition and despair, triumph and doubt, resonating with their own experiences as they navigate the ups and downs of life.As readers delve into these pages, they will come to see time as both continuous and granular, with each moment holding a unique significance. It's an acknowledgment of the continuity of life while honoring the distinctive character of each shard in the mosaic of existence.Join the author on this profound exploration of the human experience, where every shard of time is a piece of the puzzle that makes us whole. Thoughtfully composed, this book is a timeless companion for anyone seeking to understand the delicate dance of life's fragments in the grand tapestry of time.
These poems express our estrangement from the heart, our longing for return, and our pilgrim journey to wholeness. Sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, they explore the liminal space between word and silence, poetry and guided meditation. Useful for individuals and groups seeking spiritual nourishment, the book is dedicated to Mary Magdalene, the archetypal pilgrim who journeyed south of France after the death of her beloved, Jesus, to bring his illuminating consciousness to the West. The author dedicates this book to her, who "lifts us up into our fallenness." Some of the poems reflect Nonduality. Others reflect a devotional yearning for the Beloved. Some poke fun at the new age spiritual marketplace, while others are full of reverence for sacred tradition. The author advises us not to regard these as contradictions but as paradoxes. And when these poems peel away the layers of paradox, we discover that we may arrive at the goal of the pilgrimage with every step. We may breathe the divine with every inhalation. We may explore the wonders of the cosmos in this human body. The first poem embraces fear and helplessness at our present condition on earth; the rest, in various ways, respond to that despair, giving us hope and joy. The poems are rooted in earthly experience: "Get mud between your toes!" Yet they are filled with images and talismans from Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity mystical traditions. While these poems honor the mystical journey, they remind us that the way from the mind to the heart is a single breath, received as a gift of grace. While elevating our vision beyond the stars, these poems root our flesh in the ground under our feet. They remind us that our breath always leads us back to the place where we already are, in the miracle of the present moment. Alfred K. LaMotte is a college instructor in world religions and an experienced teacher of meditation who has spent a lifetime in the dialogue between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. He has studied with meditation masters of India and in Benedictine monasteries in Europe and the U.S. This is the author's sixth volume of poetry, his fourth with Saint Julian Press.
The Telling, The Listening is a new collection of narrative poems drawn from forty-five years of medical practice. Catharine Clark-Sayles, MD, served as a physician in the United States Army and private internal medicine and geriatric medical practice. These poems share real stories, subtly altered for anonymity, highlighting the healing power of listening carefully and telling each story with empathy and compassion. These poems explore the challenges doctors face daily, delivering bad news, balancing care with objectivity, and witnessing the mysteries of life and death. From medical school to hospitals, hospices, and beyond, the range of stories includes combat veterans, AIDS patients, and individuals facing profound choices. Readers will discover personal reflections on loss and the changing nature of medicine while engaging in a poignant and poetic conversation where storytelling bridges the gap between medicine and humanity.
MATRIX is a must-read for those seeking a profoundly moving poetic experience. With its masterful language, evocative imagery, and exploration of the human condition, Bialer's collection offers solace, provokes introspection, and leaves an indelible mark on the hearts of its readers. The collection serves as a reminder that even in the face of life's ephemeral nature, the human capacity to love is unwavering. And from the ashes of loss and memory, something new emerges, transforming life and offering enduring relationships with family and friends. The lesson these verses offer is that life is transforming; life calls out to life.
Beyond air & water, beyond food & shelter, do we also require beauty to survive? And can there be beauty without connection to the divine feminine, holding a world together? A cairn of poems built from the weight of physical and spiritual inheritance, Tools & Ornaments leans against a heroic crown of sonnets, piecing together a life that ends as an act of mercy.
Notes from a Marine Biologist's Daughter renders in poems the inheritance of a love of the wild, love of language, love of family. Loss, grief, and recovery resolve in a closely observed, deeply felt connection to nature. In these mostly lyrical quiet poems, we find tenderness in an animal's behavior, comfort in the sounds of a storm, an awareness that nature has a life that does not depend on us, that needs to be left alone, but from which we can learn and, when we need it, be comforted. The tonal range of these poems is extensive, including exuberance and grief, seeking and confirmation, solitude and solidarity.Two worlds are closely noted in this collection of autobiographical poems, the childhood world of Wrightsville Sound and the adult daughter's world of south Florida. Infused in the experience of both of these worlds, past and present, is the enduring presence and power of a marine biologist mother.
FAME is a book about human affection and disaffection and the unique narrative which presents this perpetual movement. The poems come from India, Greece, the Windward Islands, and New England, places whose landscapes have informed the metaphors of this work. Love being itself the only metaphor that allows us to apprehend our true freedom in this world, enabling us to give more than we receive so that our aim be true. Fame is a sign of this transcendental knowledge and experience.
"We think back through our mothers if we are women," Virginia Woolf declares in A Room of One's Own, and certainly Joan Baranow embraces a woman-centered poetics in A Slight Thing, Happiness. In this volume of poetry, Baranow explores the many phases of motherhood, beginning with her struggle with infertility treatments, toxemia of pregnancy, and the premature births of her sons. The poems that open the book narrate those early days of disappointment, hope, and gratitude with vivid images of nature as the poet negotiates her way through a harsh clinical environment. In section II Baranow looks back to women who have gone before, searching for guidance on how best to be a mother while losing her own mother to cancer. The loss of one's mother, both literally and spiritually, is a motif that recurs throughout the book. The elder women of folktale, for instance, are presented as fierce females who have tragically lost control over their lives. In "Grandma" the speaker remembers how "Once, she had carried an axe. / Once, she had flayed the little doves / so plentiful here, the specks of their eyes / bright onyx gems...." Like the grandmother in "Little Red Riding Hood," she knows that age has taken her strength and "she's the ghost now, isn't she, / blasted, blown, her legs like twisted rags." In "Sergeant Marge," a war veteran no longer able to care for herself is tied to a hospital bed, straining against the system that insists on caring for her while taking away her agency. Even the poet's own mother, speaking from the grave, has nothing but consolation to offer her grieving daughter. Although her female forebears find themselves weakened by age, their resistance to forces that restrain them is inspiring. The poet learns that casualness in the face of fear may be a model for motherhood. This third section of the book describes the world as seen by her children, a world "with or without wings," where death hovers on the margins of their awareness. Baranow mourns the ordinary deaths that occur as a natural part of life-a drowned rat, a dead fawn-yet she encourages her toddler to bravely "walk atop a stone wall, pigeon-toed." Here are poems that celebrate the heedless energy of childhood even while death remains ever-present in the poet's mind. The last section of the book moves outward as the demands of motherhood shift into a larger social sphere and the poet reconnects with friendships, marriage, and her own childhood memories. Nature remains the vital core of Baranow's relationship to life and to her image-making. She remembers when her "soul had a chance to travel / where the land was useless- / just fields of abandoned apple trees" and how she once released a cloud of termites that were immediately snatched up by dragonflies, "swooping in / like chunky bombers." Nature is physically and morally instructive, from the intimate details of reproductive life to the stars that "kept their course." Despite her admission, "I know so little about / what I love," the poet and her teenage son find themselves momentarily confiding in each other, wrapped under the night sky in the womb-like warmth of a hotel hot tub.
What happens when a family flees Communism-leaving one child behind? This is the story of one such child after her family departs in the night leaving her behind with her grandmother in a tiny Hungarian village.
Song of the Republic is a mythical handbook of poetry about these United States and how they first arose in consciousness. The native awareness of our pre-Columbian and pre-Cartesian terrain, the terrible ordeals of human extinction and trafficking, the violence of civil contention, and the vast endurance and visionary efforts of millions of European and Asian migrants voyaging toward this land, have produced an American culture that is deeply imbued with the experience of terrific grief and yet it is one whose composition is profoundly feminine. In this book there is no male gaze, for the work is a feminist project; in its purest sense the male gaze only truly concerns situations where men are thinking about other men.
MESSIAH, a post-modern bop through our culture set in diverse elements of the American landscape- from a Manhattan subway station, to mills of rural Louisiana, to the mean streets of Detroit, to the wilds of the American Northwest, to Yankee Stadium, to the hills of Bellaire - writes back to the Bible passages with which Handel composed his Messiah Oratorio without challenging their theological meaning but setting them, as most sacred art does, in the contemporary. Anne Babson's poetry isn't "churchy," but it is replete with passionate exhortation, delighting in Americans in their imperfections and calling for a subversive conspiracy of love and a new era of compassion. The book is set to a soundtrack of American music, where the rapture trumpet is blown by Louis Armstrong, where the angels sing in doo-wop chorus, and where Handel's "Chorus: Hallelujah" turns into a Southern Rock anthem. The work is about us and our needs, our playlist, our delights, and the possibility of radical forgiveness and a return to hope.
My impression of poetry from high school literature was one of intentionally obscured images, creating a coded language that I was meant to tease out at great length. Midway through life's journey, I spent years trying to write down my experiences of Church, but struggled to find the right form. Much as I aspired to a sweeping historical genre, my own efforts in that direction never came together. Something in the nature of the sacred eluded my grasp, and resisted my efforts to write in such an affirmative manner.With the encouragement of several friends and guides, I allowed interior practices, like centering prayer and dreamwork, to influence my writing. These practices help us to gently set aside the voice of the ego, to access inner sources of symbol, meaning, and connectedness. Not far along this path, I began to describe spiritual experience in a language appropriate to its mystery. To no one's surprise more than my own, that language is poetry!Many of these poems deal with themes of misunderstanding and alienation, especially on the part of those coping with physical or neurological difference. Reflection on the interconnected framework of spectrum traits - both strengths and challenges - has helped me to make sense of my journey, and also of the historical witness given by certain extraordinary people of faith. It may be that some autistic-seeming traits are hard to distinguish from attributes of persons who feel not-at-home between the seen and unseen worlds.Andrea Messineo Houston, August 2019
Horizon of the Dog Woman powerfully explores the strength of people, especially women, who struggle to find acceptance-in their bodies, in histories, in relationships, or in Indigeneity. These poems invoke the anxieties of outsiders, of those forced to reside in the liminal spaces of our society. Still, from these in-between places and too-often ignored perspectives, the speakers boldly proclaim their presence and their deep understanding of the systems complicit in their situations. The personas created in Horizon's poems refuse to be sidelined. Rather, they dig in and create new spaces, building up rather than being overcome.Largely set against the vast northern forests and deserted shorelines of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Horizon describes a landscape that, while sometimes frigid and harsh, also offers space for growth, solitude, and a kind of peace that exists outside the frameworks of "civilization." The poems in this collection recreate the Great Lakes region's deep northern woodlands, as well as its shorelines, borders, and ghost towns; it is in this liminal wilderness that Horizon's speakers most often find acceptance of place and self.Built on both the personal and the persona, this collection gives voice to the unvoiced throughout history and literature. From Leda of Greek mythology to a mid-20th Century female magician; from the "Radium Girls" to unspoken women in the classic poems of Kipling, Noyes, or Carroll; from Mohegan ancestors to Lake Superior, the characters in the persona poems speak boldly and against that which would silence them. Also invoking a more personal perspective, Horizon details the first steps by an Indigenous woman toward an exploration of her disconnected histories, cultures, and languages. As a member of a displaced group of Indigenous peoples, the author explores not only what it means to be displaced, but also "re-placed" into the homelands of another Indigenous culture. Drawing on both Brothertown/Mohegan and Anishinaabe language and traditions, Horizon begins to interrogate multicultural Indigenous spaces and bodies disrupted and complicated by settler colonialism. Here too, the narrators are asking where they fit in, sometimes demonstrating conviction, while at other times doubting, questioning, and leaving the reader without easy answers.At its heart, Horizon of the Dog Woman is about relationships. Yes, romantic relationships, both the hopeful and the toxic, but more so about relationships between mothers and daughters, women and their communities, people and their histories, between the body and the land. First and foremost, the relationship that underlies each of these is the relationship between the body and the self. The poems in Horizon return to the body over and over again, exploring, for example, the effects of society's expectations, unwanted pregnancy, sexual and emotional violence, as well as the healing effects of nature. The voices issuing from those battle-weary but tenacious bodies don't just speak; they demand to be heard.
In a time of cultural wars, social polarizations, fears, and the rise of nationalism, authoritarian ideologies and isolationists across the global there are questions we must ask ourselves as human beings. That is what this book does, as it also touches on the story of a generation who came before us. This is "The Greatest Generation" that lived through World War II and many of the veiled and evil -"isms" inflicted upon humankind in the 20th and now in the 21st century.The great American poet and 9th Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish wrote these verses in his seventh book of poetry, The Hamlet of A.MacLeish - published in 1928."We have learned the answers, all the answers It is the question that we do not know. We are not wise."As an ordained United Methodist minister for over fifty-five years, and practicing psychotherapist for over forty years, the Rev. Robert P. Starbuck never read the Bible in a literal way. It was always a quest, a quest which belongs to each of us, to ask the right questions. As a clergy, he saw the beloved Bible stories, readings, and lessons, as a way of wisdom. As a way of being and becoming; a way of renewal, redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, and spiritual enlightenment. And as a Christian minister and therapist, as an American, he was actively engaged in healing and repairing the world.He saw the Bible stories as something to be taught, cherished, and celebrated as sacred literature and scripture. Our beloved stories of the Bible are filled with allegories and metaphors, pointing humankind towards a higher truth and experience of the divine. A way that points us towards an intimate and eternal relationship with the divine that is ours to claim, a new being and a new creation. As a minister he believed in and administered the Holy Sacraments of the church. He believed in God as the Ultimate Divine Mystery, the "Real Presence" of Christ, and the Holy Spirit - the Love of God, actively at work within the world.He was able to live in this mystery, to accept it fully and completely, and came to realize early in his adult life what Jesus was ultimately teaching humankind. Not to judge others, but to love God, and others as yourself - the "Golden Rule" in many faiths. We find this in the two greatest commandments of Christ. Hear what our Lord Jesus saith: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." - Matthew 22:37-40 In his ministry, he urged people to embrace life, to live their lives in great spiritual abundance and fullness, without separation, wholly aware and completely open - alive with wonder. He believed in Jesus and the message and gift of God's love, of salvation and oneness within the Trinity. He saw these as higher mysteries that take us beyond all religions and all religious beliefs, faiths, symbols, words, and images. He imagined God as something more.He believed in the unity of God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, unseen and invisible that is always waiting for us to claim the power of God's love and healing within our own lives. And he believed in the transforming power of God's love, God as love and Christ as God's love made manifest within the world. In the end, this work is an affirmation of his faith. Ron Starbuck, Executive Editor - Sain
Praise for BRING YOUR NIGHTS WITH YOU: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2015IT IS as if all of human experience, knowledge, and geography are encoded and distilled within this new double volume of poetry by Thomas Simmons, such is the tremendous conceptual, intellectual, and sonorous range of the work. The poet incorporates so much worldly perception and literature within these pages that it is as if the reader is being offered a vision of both human and unearthly existence at once.The drama of voice and also of diction magnify and amplify this literary magnificence, the mature work of a humanist whose learning and poetic ability extends beyond any specific personal moment, engaging with a thoroughly extensive mortal terrain. However, there exists an unseen sub-textual performative quality inside all of these poems which raises the words and lines off the page-within the mind of the reader-and which supply the language with an enigmatic non-verbal quality: simultaneous, immediate, and so profoundly finite. This uncanny pneuma is intrinsic to the worth of these two fine books.It is as if the poet is foretelling his own life, but in paradoxical retrospect, such is the vivacious and vital nature of consciousness at work in these lines. It is a distinction of writing and awareness, of both sadness and fascination, as thepoet's attention careers away from a world before grace towards an imperishable and indelible comprehension.The poet says, Among those I loved you were the first ... whose only choice was to prevent my ever reaching you; and then later, How to say good-bye when one has already gone? Such sentiments are the mysterious and contrary threads that run through the fabric of this wonderful poetry binding the emotions and material detail into one strong medium, a tissue of song whose mastery lies not only in the expression but in its even greater indication of what cannot be said. Such is the genius of knowing the unspeakable and yet being competent and compassionate enough to endure that terrific and necessary effort which art can only imply.--Kevin McGrath, Harvard University There's a deep, rumbling power to these poems, a kind of wild but tempered energy that comes only when you're lucky enough to encounter a poet capable ofweaving accessible narrative with vivid, well-crafted lyricism. There's humor, too,not to mention savage intelligence paired with refreshing humanity and political conscience. In short, Simmons has gifted us with a collection spilling over with my favorite breed of poems: the kind you can teach in a classroom, lounge with on a beach, or cling to in the waiting room of an E.R., confident that at the veryleast, you're in good company.--Michael Meyerhofer, author of What To Do If You're Buried Alive
Schwartz's second collection of poems examines the legacy of trauma and abuse among a family of women-and the ability of women and girls to survive. At times searing in grief, in other moments patient and willing to accept, Schwartz questions the truth behind any survival, what it looks like for a girl to emerge from the bottom of any cenote, or a city's residents to move forward after a hundred-year flood. Call all thriving things illegal: / The magnolia tree, its roots, / That vast network of veins that feeds itself / And others like it in dry soil, / Pushes space through concrete sidewalks / To breathe ... Every tough, gnarled thing holding / Its own life in a fist of vitality is illegal. --from" Everything is Illegal," Nightbloom & Cenote
Praise for DHARMA RAIN"Watch your step," warns the speaker in "Vortices," one of the gripping poems in Terry Lucas's Dharma Rain. Good advice for approaching Lucas's second full-length collection, for in these poems, "everything enters you." From the grim realities of "The Arrival," "Horse Latitudes," and "A Short History of Baby Incubators" to the wry humor of "Science Fact or Fiction" (about the history of "Giving the finger") and the delicious wit of "Psalm '66" to an amazing series of poems placing John Calvin as a kid growing up in Texas in the '50s, the poems of Lucas's new book confront the mysteries of science, faith, and desire in exquisite forms, delicious language, and keen intelligence. - Wendy Barker In these ambitious, far-reaching poems, Terry Lucas alternates between his own spiritual agon, specifically his wrestling with Calvinistic ghosts in the persona of a boy named Calvin, and his eclectic, lyrical investigations of such subjects as wild dogs, the spirit, Tassajara, the New Mexico desert, becoming a poet, survivors of barrel descents over Niagara Falls, and a short history of baby incubators. In his fresh new visions of the world stripped of its former fashions, ideologies, and mythologies, Lucas writes as if he's observing the world for the first time on his own heuristic terms in both dexterously formal and free verse. The result is a bold, often iconoclastic chronicle of a poet who "one day...just left / the stains in the whorls of his fingertips, the taste / on his tongue, and went home forever / to the work that had called him from birth." - Chard deNiord
PRAISE for THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT BEING AN EPISCOPALIAN Ron Starbuck is poet who has taken to heart and soul the teaching in Psalm 46, 'Be still and know that I am God.' Spoken in the voice of a deep listener, who seeks to embrace all souls in the Mystery of God's Love, who seeks to heal the breach. These poems are ecumenical both in that they are unifying and in the etymological root of the word, which is derived from the Greek word for house. Here is poetry that beautifully and prayerfully makes of the world a home where all of us may dwell.~ Aliki Barnstone, University of MissouriRon Starbuck has written a work of extraordinary vision and prophecy; this is a book of both profound reverence and a song of contemporary liturgy. It is a masterpiece that will transform the belief and devotion of all who experience these lines, either verbally or literally. Without doubt, this is a great work for the new Twenty-First Century.~ Kevin McGrath, Harvard University
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