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A Culture of Mysticism

A great awakening is occurring across humanity, and there are now many active, helpful teachers from numerous spiritual paths and traditions to assist us in this awakening. It makes sense, then, that, in addition to the teachings of various mysticisms, there should arise a culture of mysticism reflecting the prevailing…

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ACIM and Ikhnaton

There are, I believe, at least two instances where A Course in Miracles alludes to the cultural reforms of the Pharaoh Ikhnaton.  First, the Course contrasts the “darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun” (T.20.VI.4.1), with the “living temple in a world of light” where…

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Writing process

My writing process includes three components: reading, observation and spirituality: reading for literary technique, observation for subject matter, and spirituality for purpose (which is to reconnect with source and with each other). I typically work on literary matters early in the morning and then late at night, and I spend…

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Pandemic Art

I did not set out to write a book about a pandemic, but because I aim to set up my easel and paint the world I see, many of the poems written during the lockdown naturally describe its effects (in particular, poems A.9 through A.34, and B.1 through B.12). The…

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Settings of Love | Source | Joy

I should mention some of the locations of the poems included in Love | Source | Joy, because the style of the book very much focuses on describing specific places and times. Settings of the poems frequently include: downtown Los Angeles, near the Central Library; the area around LACMA and…

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Rhyming and Musicality

What is poetic is what is musical in language, and musicality can be accomplished by different means. The Greeks and Romans used complex meters based on syllable length; the Psalmists parallel structures; the Beowulf poet, alliteration; the medieval European lyricists, rhyme. What we see in Europe as languages slowly shift…

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Birth of Poetry

In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes the artist as retreating into the Apollonian world of dreams and visions to confront Dionysian forces of annihilation under more acceptable aspect. The artistic impulse, then, is born of the reaction to brutality projected into imaginative states. There are parallels with how A…

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A few words about meter

When I first started writing, I thought of meter as constructed by selecting words that accentually fit the rhythmic pattern. Eventually, I began to feel or sense the meter, rather than construct it, which was liberating. For the blank verse poems in Part A, I use the standard iambic pentameter…

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Measure for Measure and Advanced Forgiveness

Like Borges, Shakespeare knew that this world is an illusion. He also knew the power of advanced forgiveness, which he wrote about in Measure for Measure. The Duke of Vienna pretends to leave on a diplomatic mission and appoints Antonio, a deeply confused and conflicted man, to serve in his…

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Ikhnaton and Source Culture

The Pharoah Ikhnaton is said to have brought in the great artists of the Minoan Civilization, the Picassos of their day, to teach the artisans at his court to produce a new art: flowing, curvy figures, more naturalistic, more in tune with source. The stern display of belligerent power favored…

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“You should write like Pindar”

I was in a taxi once coming home from the airport when I suddenly thought: “you should write like Pindar.” This was an odd thought to have, as I had not read much Pindar, odder still, because I was not then writing anything at all. In fact, I had quit…

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A Sonnet about Ramana Maharshi

As mentioned in the book’s introduction, I used the highly compressed sonnet form to work out matters of style before moving to blank verse. The sonnet, which I find beautiful in all its manifestations, is a fourteen-line form using a fixed set of rhymes that have changed somewhat over time….

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