Schenck imbues this collection of poems with all the insults and injuries and exaltations peculiar to any archdruid suffering these times. And yet through the unmatched ferocity and honesty of his poetic vision he transcends them and the mossy limitations of naturalist poetry. In the crucible of his experience an exceptional intelligence continues to glow: a penetrating insight into myth, nature, philosophy, political intrigues, personal sacrifice, psychic torment and the triumphant soul. ...

In this volume, I have made an effort to push further the practice of assembling philosophical fictions or, if you prefer, literary philosophy. These efforts are driven by conviction that, in so many ways, what were once assumed to be clear boundaries and lines of demarcation between literature and philosophy are not only no longer obvious but, in fact, may well be hindering the development of philosophy or, better, some new form of writing in a fuller sense, beyond the genre demarcations ...

Zchenk Among Demons blossomed out of hard and exciting work in esoteric philosophy and poetry during the years 1984-87, most of which study was guided by Elizabeth Sewell. Together we explored the “invisible” tradition running, in her reading, from Plotinus through to Yeats. The pulse of Demons? A multiplicity of indirections—voices, actors, masks; genres, styles, methods. Layer after layer of self-removal. And how to prosecute philosophy as a made thing, and thus as poetry? “An impossible...

Healthcare providers are constantly confronted with illness and injury, and the challenges of healing. Yet this very work, the relief of suffering, inflicts on healthcare providers suffering of their own that is often crippling. The most common terms for the pain caregivers and healers suffer from are burnout and moral distress. These common terms are, however, often used judgmentally--as if those trying to heal others have failed themselves, their colleagues, and their patients. The net r...

A wondrously written book of literary criticism and philosophy that maps the relationship between poetry and natural history, connecting verse from poets such as Shakespeare and Rainer Maria Rilke to the work of scientists and theorists like Francis Bacon and Michael Polanyi.Taking its bearings from the Greek myth of Orpheus, whose singing had the power to move the rocks and trees and to quiet the animals, Elizabeth Sewell’s The Orphic Voice transforms our...

In this groundbreaking volume, David Schenck and Larry Churchill present the results of fifty interviews with practitioners identified by their peers as "healers," exploring in depth the things that the best clinicians do. They focus on specific actions that exceptional healers perform to improve their relationships with their patients and, subsequently, improve their patients' overall health. The authors analyze the ritual structure and spiritual meaning of these healing skills, as well a...

In this groundbreaking volume, David Schenck and Larry Churchill present the results of fifty interviews with practitioners identified by their peers as "healers," exploring in depth the things that the best clinicians do. They focus on specific actions that exceptional healers perform to improve their relationships with their patients and, subsequently, improve their patients' overall health. The authors analyze the ritual structure and spiritual meaning of these healing skills, as well a...

About Threshold Songs, the voices in these poems perform at the interior thresholds encountered each day, where we negotiate the unfathomable proximities of knowing and not knowing, the gulf of seeing and feeling, the uncanny relation of grief to joy, and the borderless nature of selfhood and tradition. Both conceptual and haunted, these poems explore the asymmetry of the body's chemistry and its effects on expression and form. The poems in Threshold Songs tune us to the microtonal music o...

Winner of the Herder Prize, Nichita Stanescu was one of Romania’s most celebrated contemporary poets. This dazzling collection of poems – the most extensive collection of his work to date – reveals a world in which heavenly and mysterious forces converse with the everyday and earthbound, where love and a quest for truth are central, and urgent questions flow. His startling images stretch the boundaries of thought. His poems, at once surreal and corporeal, lead us into new metaphysical and ...

The ravaging effects of illness, the breakup of a relationship and the disturbing nature of relocation. These are the subjects under award-winning Luke Davies' meditative eye. Luke Davies' Totem was a grand love poem, a hymn to life; Interferon Psalms is a song of the brutality of time, a song of death, yet equally as beautiful.

Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . .A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Ho...

Prayer is the master key. A key may fit one door of a house, but when it fits all doors it may well claim to be a master key. Such and no less a key is prayer to all earthly problems.