Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

“Vampires in the Coal Mines”: A Review of Gary Lee Vincent’s Darkened Hollows

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:39:00 +0000

(Burning Bulb Publishing, 2011, ISBN: 9780615527222)

In this sequel to Darkened Hills (2010), which I recently reviewed, Gary Lee Vincent begins to hit his stride as both a storyteller and an integrator of the culture and communities of West Virginia into the vampire genre.

Over the first quarter or so of the novel, Vincent fills in the gaps in the story told in the previous book, an interesting technique that he handles with craft. Through narrative supported by fictional newspaper articles, court transcripts, and other devices, he gives the reader a broader understanding of the events that transpired in the fictional WV town of Melas (that’s Salem, spelled backwards) in the prequel.

As I eluded to at the onset, this novel in many ways surpasses its predecessor, delving deeper into both vampire/demon mythology and two main staples of West Virginia—the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (the fiction Weston Lunatic Asylum in the novel) and the coal mine.

A standout section of the book is chapter 5. It is here that we find out the underlying stories of the vampires, and who they “answer” to, and Vincent’s exploration of the history of psychiatric medicine in the United States, as expressed through the history of the local lunatic asylum, is well-researched and seamlessly woven into the larger story.

Chapter 6 is equally strong, taking on the structural and procedural complexities of coal mining. The level of detail and vivid description of the tunnels and structural supports adds to the ever-building tension as a group of hapless miners encounter the zombie-like creatures of the underground.

From here to the end, the story builds with all the requisite characters and evil machinations of the prototypical American horror novel as exemplified by Stephen King, with local law enforcement, disgruntled low-level medical staff, a snow storm, evil Doctors, and of course the vampires and the heroes (in this case, also ala King, a dysfunctional “family” triad) all converging on the lunatic asylum.

With one more novel promised next year to close out the trilogy, the ending leaves things at a purposely high level of chaos.

Just a few words about Vincent: He has published several non-fiction books as well as the novel Passageway and has a background and Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems. In addition to being an author, editor, and publisher he is also a recording artist, with three albums to his credit.

“Weighing in with Words”: A Review of Vittorio Carli’s A Passion for Apathy: Collected and Rejected Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:22:00 +0000

(Press of the 3rd Mind, Chicago, 2012, ISBN: 978-0-9800257-3-9)

On the last page of this brand new First Edition, there is an opportunity for readers to write in for free samples of collections by such well-known independent poets as Bradley Lastname, Eric Johnt, Robert Pomerhn, and Patrick Porter. In the past nine years I have reviewed several of the works listed. I recommend them all and any other titles you can acquire from this Chicago-based small press, because quality and relevancy are guaranteed.

With this in mind, I was honored to have received an advance copy of Carli’s book and it didn’t disappoint.

Being a college teacher of film, literature, and humanities as well as a reviewer of film and art and collaborative performance artist, Carli is a poet that unapologetically tells it like he sees it, dissecting from his own multi-faceted and hyper-personal perspective such topics as literary academia, Death, the personalities of the Chicago poetry scene, reality vs. illusion in numerous areas, man vs. woman, the current state of Vampire lore, and a plethora of pop cultural and more obscure references, including his “Poem for a Friend who Hates Movies” and multi-page list of personalities that passed on in 2006 (no small irony that Darren McGavin and Dan Curtis died the same year).

My favorite poem in the collection is called “The Trouble with Librarians” (which brought to mind at least title-wise Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Trouble with Classicists” on Songs for Drella), a laundry list of politico-cultural Conspiracy Theory all laid in the laps of those oh so innocuous librarians…

Like many of my professor friends, Carli laments in “Ballad of an Adjunct” the thankless work of the academic. Reading things like this always makes me glad I left graduate school after a single semester…

…and he then goes on in “Ode to all the People I Love” to lambaste to greater and lesser degrees the Arts practitioners as well… so now I think I’m screwed…

Libraries, out. Academia, out. Stages, out.

Ah—but there’s always Las Vegas!

But, after reading “Viva Las Vegas” I am pretty sure Las Vegas is morte.

Carli employs similar sarcasm with “In Praise of Woody Allen,” a guy I never, ever liked… except maybe as a CG Ant…

I need to make it clear that this relatively small (68 pages) collection is in no way narrow or repetitious, either stylistically or thematically. Far from. There is free verse, rhyming verse (where Carli shows the least originality and strength), language poetry, story-poems, repetitive poems, and even a bit of vispo, and the ending poem of the book: “Theological Parody” is something else again, and well worth a few careful reads.

Poet–publisher Bradley Lastname and Press of the 3rd Mind continue to be at the forefront of the small and independent press, and in this transitional time of major publishers dealing with the drive to digital, it will be smaller presses like this one that will provide the stability of their traditions and quality catalogs and a place for good poets to go while the bigger guys are hiding out and game-planning new ways to keep their hands in the pie.

“Vampire Pastiche”: A Review of Gary Lee Vincent’s Darkened Hills

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:09:00 +0000

(Burning Bulb Publishing, 2010, ISBN: 9781453844854)

I’ve always enjoyed just a little more works of fiction that take place in locales with which I am familiar. It adds something special when I can not only visualize a place, but have actually been there.

Having lived and traveled extensively in the northern half of West Virginia since moving here a little over four years ago, I found the locales in which Vincent places his vampires to be perfectly suited to both their peculiar sensibilities and those of their typical victims.

Darkened Hills is the first installment of Darkened—The West Virginia Vampire Series (the second book, Darkened Hallow, is now available. It’s sitting on my shelf, ready to be read). It is the 2010 Book of the Year Winner from ForeWord Reviews Magazine and shares a publisher, Burning Bulb, with The Big Book of Bizarro, which I also recently reviewed. Vincent was a contributing editor. He has published several non-fiction books as well as the novel Passageway and has a background and Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems. In addition to being an author, editor, and publisher he is also a recording artist, with three albums to his credit.

For Darkened Hills, Vincent draws heavily on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Stephen King’s de-/re-construction of it, Salem’s Lot. Being that he is so up front and obvious about it, the way King was, makes it solidly a pastiche in the tradition of Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes books or Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, making it all the more fun to read, especially with its West Virginia¬–centric settings (including the fictional town of Melas, a mirror image of the real town of Salem. Yes. Salem. It fits.).

Each section or chapter opens with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe, many of them from more obscure works and all chosen for their appropriateness to what follows. I enjoyed reading them as much as the book itself.

Within its well-known framework and cast of characters, Darkened Hills, both by virtue of its unique setting and the imaginative mind of its author, manages to stand on its own in the town-is-demonized-and-disintegrated-while-unlikely-heroes-fight-the-forces-of-evil subset of the vampire canon, and it left me eager to read the sequel. It is well-paced, deft in its handling of multiple storylines unfolding at once, and Vincent knows the geography and the way it plays on the minds of its inhabitants quite well.

Speaking of the inhabitants, Darkened Hills runs the gamut from small-town and backwoods folk, to occultists, clergy, police, mental health professionals, and, of course, the guy who returns to his hometown with dreams of buying its weird old mansion just in time to find its been bought by a mysterious man (who we later find out is a vampire).

Peppered with just the right amounts of graphic violence and sex (less than, say, True Blood but more than Bram Stoker’s Dracula), the novel has appeal to the vampire story enthusiast as well as the more casual horror reader looking for a quick read with easily understood characters and an uncomplicated storyline.

Look for my review of the sequel to Darkened Hills in the next few months.

“The Place to Get Your Freak On”: A Review of The Big Book of Bizarro

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:36:00 +0000

(2011, Burning Bulb Publishing, www.burningbulbpublishing.com)

by Joey Madia

This ambitious collection of over 50 “bizarro” tales, edited by West Virginia authors Rich Bottles Jr. and Gary Lee Vincent, is divided into three sections: Horror, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and Erotica. There are many definitions for the ever-evolving genre of “Bizarro,” including one in the book, although I define it simply as taking graphic violence and erotica a little further than the mainstream would and then, once it’s there, pushing it just a little further.

The potential problem with this approach is that the violence and erotica wind up at times as being the whole point of the work, and there is no story; no craft. To the editors’ credit, there are few stories in this collection that fall into that trap and they stick out like a severed, rotting, puss-running thumb that had previously been up to no good in someone child’s back end (see how Bizarro works?).

In this reviewer’s opinion, the strongest stories are in the Horror section, which makes sense. A lot of violence and a little sex have been the tools of the trade for Horror from the start, so these writers have the clearest, cleanest path to success. Conversely, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section is the weakest. It is here that it is most obvious that Bizarro was hot-forged into an at-best moderately interesting tale of aliens and the like. The Erotica section starts slowly, but builds over the last four or five stories to a satisfying crescendo of sound and breath and fluid (are you following this Bizarro thing?).

Before I get into some of the best of the stories, I have to mention that the book is impressively laid out, with many of the graphical elements that are missing from most small-press books. There are some interesting illustrations by Jon Towers and the front and back cover images are sure to draw the eye and get people talking. The stories themselves contain a one-line description (most of which are pleasantly clever) and an author bio right there on the title page. I much prefer this to having to constantly flip to the back of the book to a Bio section. The type is clean and large and makes for a fast, easy read. The typos are minimal, a credit to the editors’ work in putting together in a professional presentation 512 pages of layout.

And so, some of my favorites.

In the Horror section, there is “Whore of the Dartmoor” by editor Rich Bottles, Jr. I had the pleasure of hearing Rich read this story aloud at a writer’s group I host (well, most of it… he tactfully removed the sexier parts for our mixed audience of Bizarro and more circumspect writers) and his twisted take on the misuses of public domain works and the riotous wrath of a certain Holmesian author is both entertaining and thought-provoking. I also enjoyed Nikko Lee’s “Honey-Do” (most husbands will) and fellow NJ native Nelson Pyles’s “Decorations” (most wives will). My favorite stories in this section are Jesse Saxon’s “Karnivali” and Michael Migliore’s “Front Page,” both of which are well-researched, well-conceived, and well-executed. The Horror section ends with a poem called “Want” by Meself John, procured by the editors under interesting circumstances (which I will leave for you to read). This piece stands out because in a boundary-pushing landscape like the Big Book of Bizarro, this two-page rant-poem made me ask: “What would the rest of these authors say if they could truly say anything?”

The highlight of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy (and one of the best in the collection) is Kenzi Mathews’s “In Cocoon, I am Embryo,” which is written in a finely haunting, hyper-visual style. I also enjoyed Derek Tabor’s “The Only One to Save,” Sean Martin’s “False Idols,” and D. Harlan Wilson’s “Scotomization,” with its interesting take on the mythic clan that is the Kennedys. Another strong entry in this category is Michael C. Thompson’s “Diethylamide,” which is written in a Beat-like, stream of consciousness, painting-with-words style that includes a vispo-like typography. Like Mathews’ story, it is one of the highlights of the collection.

The Erotica section is, well, pretty erotic. And like the varied acts that are the coin of its realm, it builds slowly but steadily into a satisfying climax, which I might have mentioned earlier. It is in this section, in the first bunch of stories, that graphic writing for its own sake really dings the overall quality of the section, but from Reina Sobin’s “Womb with a View” on to the end (with one or two to-remain-nameless exceptions) there is some really good writing here. Other stories well worth the time are Andree Lachapelle’s “Love Bites,” “Pomegranate Moth” by Richard Godwin, and my favorite of the section, Peter Baltensperger’s “Sonata for Insects and Violins.” I also have to recommend “Fun House” by Kimber Vale, because, in a book of Bizarro, this might very well be the winner of the Weird Award.

Overall, this book is a fun trip with plenty of good writing. When not reading, leave it on the passenger seat of your car, on the coffee table, or by the water cooler at work. Let people know your ready to get your freak on.

A Review of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s Adagio and Lamentation

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:19:00 +0000

(il piccolo editions by Fisher King Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-926715-05-6)

It has been a couple of years, since my review of Ed Baker’s Restoration Poems, that I have felt so moved by the prayer that a poem can be and the soul-bearing, soul-reaching prayerbook that is the rare collection such as this.

Lowinsky’s history is complicated and rich. Many of her family members were lost to the concentration camps of World War II Europe. She is the granddaughter of painter Emma Hoffman, whose watercolor of her Berkeley home graces Adagio and Lamentation’s cover. She has endured (more than?) her share of hurt and grief and pain.

And yet these larger circumstances—the mix of tragedy and triumph through the healing that is Art well made and selflessly shared—matter less in the scope of the selections than the Little Things—moments and minor memories; love and its loss; affairs and adjustments.

There is, of course, because of her grandmother’s craft, the taking of inspiration from visual art, but there is also music, and musicality, and, then there are the Words. Because Adagio and Lamentation is oh so rich in words.

The opening poem, “Oma” (her grandmother’s nickname), begins:

I wish you could stop being dead (pg. 1)

And this pull to the ancestors—to know their wisdom, to glean their thoughts, to know their experiences on a level not possible from photographs, and family tales, and history books—informs and strengths every word, every phrase, every poem that comes after.

Along with its artistic inspirations, the collection is rife with religious reference and imagery, woven in such personal and yet Universal terms as to be inviting rather than off-putting to the Outsider, the goyim. There is Invitation here and no Exclusion, perhaps due most of all to the “warts and all” presentation of infidelities and other amorous pursuits.

She paints a total portrait, letting us in, creating levels and passages of insight that elevate the Poem to Prayer, evoked best in the poem “great lake of my mother” (p. 61):

mother
have I told you it’s from you I’ve learned
endurance reflection
how pain crystallized
can create
such radiance

Lowinsky, according to her biography, was not much of a painter, but her placement of words on the page, how they cascade and space themselves for exquisite meaning, makes this hard to believe.
The master work in this Meisterwerk is “what flesh does to flesh,” a poem in five parts. Like the individual scenes of a well-crafted play, this poem, and its interior poems, serves as a microcosm of the rich movement of Adagio and Lamentation, inviting us to celebrate as we meditate; to join in and sit alone to reflect on what is now new through the reading.

For more information on this talented poet, the reader is encouraged to visit www.sisterfrombelow.com

“For Lovers of Our Language”: A Review of Bradley Lastname’s Insane in the Quatrain

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:17:00 +0000

(the Press of the 3rd Mind, Chicago, Illinois, 2011)

I was first introduced to Bradley Lastname through his role as publisher of the early books of Patrick Porter and Robert Pomerhn through Press of the 3rd Mind, books they each sent me for review. This was early in the new millennium, when I was doing a lot of poetry writing, mail art, and corresponding with fertile-field poets like Ric Carfagna, Mark Sonnefeld, Joseph Verilli, and Vernon Frazer.

I first experienced Bradley’s writing when I was asked to review the first volume of Letterhead (Highest Hurdle Press, 2007), which was in part a tribute to Harvey Goldner, a mentor of Pomerhn’s. Lastname and his co-editors also produced a second volume of Letterhead, in which some of my own work appeared.

Before starting Press of the 3rd Mind in 1985, Lastname published 25 issues of the acclaimed BILE Dadazine dating from 1978 to 1984.

In addition to publishing over ten books of poetry and prose, he is a painter, sculptor, and collagist and to me, one of the champions of the necessity of poetry, and art, to any sensemaking the modern world is ultimately able to make.

Insane in the Quatrain is a 188-page celebration of all of the ingredients that make poetry the (albeit undervalued) powerful vehicle for socio-cultural-politic commentary and encapsulation that it is. Lastname is the master of wordplay, turning, corkscrewing, and cascading phrases and lyrical structures to produce a mixture of laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking, and at times shocking pieces of poetry.

As one would expect, there is plenty of surrealism, Dadaism, and corollary representations here, as well as a general gamut-running of language poetry styles, but what I like best about Insane in the Quatrain is how substantial it is in content as well as form, which is far from the case with many other language poets, who use the devices and mechanisms of the sub-genre as ends in and of themselves, which, to me, simply doesn’t satisfy.

Take for instance, a very short poem, “Pre- and Post-Sartori” (p. 26):

“Before enlightenment, Los Angeles smells like stale urine.
After enlightenment, stale urine smells like Los Angeles.”

It’s all the off-brand wisdom of Kerouac and the Beats with a healthy dose of humor.

That’s progress.

Although it may not to be to everyone’s tastes, I have always enjoyed poetry with plenty of cultural references, and Insane in the Quatrain offers them in abundance, from Shakespeare to Kierkegaard, Nabokov to Warhol, Richard Dadd to Brother Theodore, Godard to Geller, Artaud to Rimbaud, and Louis Althusser to Aleister Crowley. If an author and the resultant body of work is the sum of his or her experiences of observation, inspiration, and illumination, then such references are the mile-markers and landmarks that the fellow travel can visit for a glimpse behind the curtain and a first-hand dose of the referent.

It should be noted that, enjoyably, and rightly, there is plenty in the way of self-reference as well, be it by name or titles of other Lastname works.

Again, as a purely personal preference, I also enjoyed the many New World Order–type references sewn quietly throughout the poems. I’ll leave it to the (mis?)informed reader to find these little nuggets of what-might-really-be-at-work-here insertion.

“The Torso who Ordered Orzo” (22), “The Fall of the House of Gusher” (64), and “The Tournament” (110) are three examples of longer prose-poems that provide highlights of the collection.

My favorite piece in Insane in the Quatrain is also one of the last: “Quotations from Badly Steamed Lard” [an anagram of Bradley Lastname]. These are the types of one-liner sutra meditations in madness and wonder that will adorn the subway trains and abandoned brick tenements should the NWO raise the silk-spun specters of Crowley, Althusser, Dadd, and Artaud to populate the stages and lecture halls of the Party’s new places.

So go out and get yourself a copy of the latest from Lastname. It might just be one of those prescient kinds of books that are often mistaken for mere non-sense in their time.

“Another Piece of the Paranormal Puzzle”: A review of Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Philip J. Imbrogno’s The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda o

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:27:00 +0000

(2011, Llewellyn Worldwide, www.llewellyn.com)

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. — Socrates

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.—Hamlet, Act I, sc. v

The Vengeful Djinn, by two scientifically minded experts in the fields of the paranormal and supernatural, is an important contribution to the ongoing pursuit of answers about the Unknown, an often attacked but nevertheless serious undertaking that attracts controversy and derision from both within its ranks and without.

Guiley and Imbrogno cover a large swath of study and territory in the book’s 260 pages, which include two appendices, a bibliography, and an index. They begin with a detailed and yet well-explained tutorial on quantum physical aspects of alternate realities and the idea of the multiverse, including “string theory,” setting up with science the plausibility of the djinn dwelling in a parallel plane to ours, which allows them to interact with us without being seen.

During my own research of the paranormal/supernatural, theology, and mythology over the past twelve years, I have come to see quantum physics as the nexus between Science and the Unseen, and this lead chapter lent a certain credibility to the explorations to follow, above and beyond what I already knew about the solid reputations of the authors.

This faith in Guiley and Imbrogno’s credentials and commitment to serious scholarship as opposed to the rampant hucksterism infamously attached to their fields of expertise is invaluable to a balanced and enjoyable experience with The Vengeful Djinn because, recalling the infallible insight of Socrates, when it comes to the Unseen, Paranormal, and Supernatural, we truly do know nothing. That is, after all, the whole point. From John Keel to the many disciples, imitators, and exploiters who have come after, there is a great deal of necessary interpretation and trying on of different theories in order to make some semblance of what is just beyond our senses.

Like any work of solid scholarship should, The Vengeful Djinn operates on a number of levels. First and foremost (and most appealing to the widest audience), it is a thorough and enlightening explication of the djinn, using primarily the Quran as well as other sources to historicize, categorize, and analyze their creation, hierarchy, motivations, and tactics. If it were nothing else, this book would be an excellent contribution to the literature of the Mythical and Mystical. The sections on their relationship with Solomon, their commonalities with angels and demons (and faeries and leprechauns!), and their various classifications and range of powers make for fascinating reading, as does the authors’ prescriptions for dealing with them.

But The Vengeful Djinn then goes a step further, out to where some would say the buses cease to run, as the authors apply the fundamental traits and habits of the djinn to a wide variety of areas of the Unexplained. This is dangerous territory, leaving the authors open to sharp criticism. But the scientific methodology and field experience they bring to the table work as a sort of talisman for Guiley and Imbrogno. Their anecdotes from around the world, with at times high-level politicians and military personnel, lend a helpful legitimacy to theories that would otherwise try to cling to steep, slick, and slippery slopes. Their well-known work in identifying and testing portals to other dimensions and planes using a variety of high-tech instrumentation (some of which I have also used) is invaluable in staying with their at times tenuous lines of theory.

Toward the end, the authors delve into the world of Shadow People and the less-than-peaceful agenda of the djinn and their continued manipulations of the human race. Perhaps my own fascination with the Mythological and Mystical and the nature of the Unseen Beings that seem without a doubt (and equally without a solid classification…) to be operating in and amongst us, if we but take the time to pay them some attention, precludes me from commenting too strongly in favor of the value of this exercise in exploration, but I will say that whether you read this book as scholarship, case book, or entertainment, or preferably some combination of all three, Guiley and Imbrogno’s The Vengeful Djinn is well-written, expertly organized, and well worth your time.

“Ways and Waves and Weaving”: A Review of Patricia Damery’s Snakes, a novel

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:24:00 +0000

Fisher King Press, March 2011, ISBN: 978-1-926715-13-1, fisherkingpress.com

Snakes, a novel is the second book by Jungian analyst Patricia Damery. Her first, Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation (2010), shares as its prima materia her Midwest background and the demise of the family farm, an action of modern life that scars the soul as well as the land.

Two things strike me as notable about Snakes: First, it is written as an open letter to the narrator’s recently deceased father, but in such a subtle way that we as readers do not feel like eavesdroppers but invited listeners. Second, the book employs numerous metaphors (the farm, the sea, weaving, and, of course, snakes), which often marks the work of the amateur who cannot make decisions, leading to an incoherent book with no thru-line.

Nothing here could be further from the truth.

Perhaps it is the skill required by the high craft of weaving that allows Damery to write multi-metaphorically, or the sheer simplicity of her storytelling. The straightforward language and structure can support the artistry of numerous images, which interlock and reinforce each other in a way I’ve not often seen.

Another strength of Snakes is the fallibility and flaws of almost every character, from the narrator’s two young sons, to her husband, to her teachers, her mother, and most clearly, to her. Bad advice, close-minded opinions, misunderstandings, and selfishness seed the book’s numerous fields, and I found myself agreeing with one character in one moment and siding with another in the next. The people who populate the book are not heroic or even necessarily “literary,” but neither are they mundane or boring. They simply are, and like the access the simplicity of the language allows, I could identify with them all. This is harder to do well than a non-writer might at first imagine.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most about Snakes was the ending, because I completely disagreed with the narrator’s ultimate choice and yet it made perfect, if less than ideal, sense. It could have gone other ways—the many metaphors would have supported several—and yet, for her, it was the only one, and worthy of our respect.

So what is Snakes about? It is about the Risks we take, both major and minor, that coalesce over time to define our lives. It is about the Fear of the little things and Fear of the big things, and at the end of the day, the month, the season, and our lives, finding out that it was a shorter distance to Love than we thought. It’s about Mistakes and Regrets, and how necessary they both are to a life well and fully lived. It’s about the Earth and the Sea; the Individual and the Familial; Respect and Trust; Youth and Age. But most of all, Snakes is about finding one’s place in the Universe and how that journey is formed.

In a time when the ultimate usefulness and fate of the novel seem to be endlessly in question, a book like Snakes, with its great simplicity and subtle complexities, demonstrates what all of us who champion this literary form—writers, editors, publishers, readers, reviewers—feel in those deepest places of Knowing:

Although the journey must be taken alone, the stories of those who have gone before or who might be on parallel paths are an invaluable source of Peace and Inner Strength.

Silk Egg:Collected Novels (2009–2009), Eileen R. Tabios

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:45:00 +0000

(Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2011, ISBN: 978-1-84861-143-6)

Eileen Tabios is an innovator in the best sense of the word.

If her impressive list of publications, multi-media projects, and awards were not proof enough, one need only consider her development and promotion of the Hay(na)ku form, which has spawned three anthologies and several works from individual writers. If even that is not enough, one would be hard pressed to discount her place at the forefront of the post-postmodern language and literature movement after reading (and engaging with) Silk Egg.

Having read many and reviewed several of Tabios’ works, I have been most impressed and enthused by the requirements made on the reader (or reviewer) to partner in the product being created. This, to me, is what keeps the very short “novels” (and their even shorter chapters) from being just another experiment in what is alternately called, among other names, “Nano-fiction,” “microfiction,” and “flash fiction…”

This growing movement of short work has its roots in a famous Hemingway story, the entirety of which is: For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

Richard Brautigan (whose novel, The Hawkline Monster, according to my background research for this review, was the catalyst for the Hay(na)ku form) also worked in the ultra-short form, and now, in the age of 45-character Tweets, brief Facebook updates, and some literary agents requesting synopses of entire novels in 100 words or less, it is a tool most writers have in their toolkit.

These are different, digital days, and all but gone are the rich wordsmithed novels of the Victorian and Edwardian age, when books were thick and wordy because they were expensive and had to last the reader a good long while.

At the nexus of that Here and this Now is Silk Egg, a place where you don’t swim in the words as in days of old, but the spaces in between.

This collection of micro-novels ends with the one with which the project began—Novel Chatelaine. This set of short chains on a belt used for carrying keys, a thimble, a sewing kit, and so on is a metaphorical image Tabios has used before. The more I read, the more I am convinced that we, the Readers, are the locks into which the various and sundry keys are meant to enter.

Another recurring source of inspiration for Tabios is Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel” (which also inspired Umberto Ecco’s Name of the Rose), a geometric wonder of a library wherein is contained all the possible combinations of words for every book ever written, or yet to be. Picturing this wondrous place one cannot help but to also imagine the weathered librarians, hunch-backed monks, rebellious demons, be-spectacled book collectors, and half-mad writers searching for new inspirations in its leaf-laden passages…

It is here, in this chamber, this mansion of the mind, that one best sits while reading Silk Egg, peering through the windows of hotels and apartments, restaurants and lighthouses, vineyards and wine cellars in places ‘round the world, with their self-isolated population of affluent and emotionally detached men and women reaching across chasms of hurt and apathy to try and connect with one another. Their places of cold confrontation and passive habitation are dressed in silk and pewter, rose and diamond, jade and moss, snakeskin and ruby, linen and leather, tulip and truffle, and opium and orchid.

They try and fail, and try again, their short-armed gestures and hollow words falling between the spaces, back into the library, where they reconstitute in new forms and better possibilities as we grab and grasp and turn them to our use.

Those who bemoan the death of the book and of good writing itself need only keep up with Tabios’ growing collection of innovative and deeply engaging books to know that this is far from the case.

Review of The Creative Soul, by Lawrence H. Staples, Ph.D.

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:36:00 +0000

(2009, Fisher King Press, www.fisherkingpress.com, ISBN 978-0-9810344-4-7)
Reviewed by Joey Madia

Eighteen months ago, I reviewed Dr. Staples’s Guilt with a Twist, a book with which I had some reservations. In the case of The Creative Soul (subtitled “Art and the Quest for Wholeness”), a relatively short book (91 pages including the Index), he has expanded on my favorite section of Guilt, dealing with the process of creativity as it applies to mental health and the integration of the Shadow, a core idea in the work and writings of Carl Jung (Staples is a Jungian analyst who trained in Switzerland after making a mid-life career-switch at the age of 50).  

Inherent in the process of integrating one’s Shadow is the first step of acknowledging that it exists and exploring the push and pull of opposites at play within us all. It is this dynamic tension between good and evil, light and dark, loyalty to other and loyalty to self that feeds and fuels our creative impulses. For those whose denial of the Shadow is so deep as to cause a psychic wound, the creative act can also be the healing act.

The Creative Soul employs a successful mix of scholarship, anecdote, and writings created by Dr. Staples patients (a formula he also uses in Guilt). 

At the start of it all is the alchemical process—the manipulation of the prima materia, the first spark, the subconsciously implanted seed. In line with St. Thomas, if you bring what’s in you forth, it will save you; if you do not, it will kill you—or at the very least, it will result in the endless depression and suicidal thoughts that bring many people to therapy in the first place.

Any time you are talking about opposites, you must also talk about balance, and Dr. Staples spends a good deal of time sharing anecdotes about the button-down type whose true passion is painting, on the one hand, and the artist with no sense of stability at all. Both lifestyles are unsustainable and ultimately lead to similar ends. It is “the contrast between the opposites, not merely one of the individual opposites itself, that produce(s) the consciousness of the good feeling” (p. 39).

One technique discussed in the book is the use of dream material to fuel our creative endeavors. Dr. Staples mentions Mel Matthews, whose trilogy about the character Malcolm Clay I reviewed five years ago (also from Fisher King Press) and another book I have reviewed that readers might find of interest is Jon Lipsky’s Dreaming Together: Explore Your Dreams by Acting Them Out (Larson Publications).

Another area of interest is the cyclical nature of the creative process, and its different phases—for writers, there is the brainstorming and writing (the free creative act) and the editing and revision process (the technical work). Mix these up, and you get “writer’s block.” The pure creative act and the technical work are another set of opposites that are each severely limited in isolation.

Other areas covered in The Creative Soul are Art as Therapy and the true risk we take as artists when we put the deepest, darkest pieces of ourselves out into the world for criticism.

This book is highly recommended for anyone who works in the creative arts, especially teachers and therapists seeking to better express to students and analysands the joys and challenges of the creative process and the great value for healing, expression, and communication it has in our lives.

“Putting the Mother Back in Mother Church”: A Review of Put the Blame on Eve: What Women Must Overcome to Feel Worthy

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:45:00 +0000

“Putting the Mother Back in Mother Church”: A Review of Put the Blame on Eve: What Women Must Overcome to Feel Worthy, Melinda J. Rising, PhD (Larson Publications, 2010; larsonpublications.com). ISBN: 978-1-936012-47-3

Put the Blame on Eve is a survey of two at-first-glance distinct histories that have actually developed on parallel tracks—Christianity and Women’s Rights, and the book is organized accordingly. The first part is a thoroughly researched and fascinating history of the creation and codification of Christianity and women’s ill treatment at the hands of the Church’s founding fathers in their historical and persistent (mis)representations of Eve, Mary Mater, and Mary Magdalene. The second part is a report on the state of women’s status in modern society using the results from focus groups and Federal government departments and other reports.
Rising’s treatment of the subject evolves from three primary sources: Joseph Campbell, Elaine Pagels, and Paul Johnson. Campbell’s work on the usurpation of the Goddess’s prevalence in early cultures by the patriarchal priest classes of various religions is perhaps best stated in his Power of Myth interviews with Bill Moyers a few years before his death. Pagels and Johnson are well known for their scholarly works on religion and history.
Rising covers a great deal of historical ground in a concise, engaging manner and isn’t afraid to interject an edgy editorial comment every now and again along the way. It’d be all but impossible in this review to cover in any kind of detail the many psychological, physiological, philosophical, and theological components that went into the suppression of the Bible’s best-known women and the distortion of such epic events as The Fall of Eden, the Virgin Birth, and the reconstitution of Mary Magdalene from chief among Jesus’ advisors to Rehabilitated Whore.
Some of the Big Bad Wolves in all of this are the Emperor Constantine, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. If we keep in mind that Constantine was controlled by his mother Helena and killed his wife in a boiling bath for accusing his first-born son of trying to seduce her (factoids that do not appear in the book) and that Augustine was a recovering sex addict (which does appear in the book), it quickly becomes clear that the founding fathers of the Church were projecting their own weaknesses onto the fairer sex. Although seen as pillars of early Church thought, both Augustine and Aquinas were far off in their conceptions of the nature of the Soul and consequently pushed forth the view that women were far inferior to men.
At the heart of it all is one word, three letters: SEX. Hence Eve as Temptress, Mary Mater as Virgin, and Mary Magdalene as Whore. These pointedly conceived and cruelly marketed roles thrust upon these women are, sadly, the obstacle course with which modern women still must contend. Regardless of their very different politics, both Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton were judged more on their looks and dress than they were on their politics, and every gesture and emotional response they make is microscopically dissected to a degree far surpassing that of their male counterparts. Although they are not referenced in the book, biologist Rachel Carson and ethologist Jane Goodall were treated abysmally by colleagues and dismissed by the press as nothing but “hysterical” women who had no business in the Sciences.
Rising takes us through the Albigensian Crusade, the Inquisition, and the global Witch Hunts, all of which did further damage to the position of women. It’s hard to remain calm reading these accounts of rampant power in the guise of Divine mandate.
Some of the more disturbing remnants of these patriarchal ploys is the continued ban on women’s ordination in the Catholic Church and the current Pope’s decision to put attempts at instating women priests on the same level as sexual abuse of children.
Rising’s recounting of the Women’s Movement from its beginnings in the mid-1800s through modern times is another excellently presented historical survey that covers the major subjects of Suffrage and birth control/abortion, and brings to light the differing philosophies that began pitting women against women in their fight for equal rights—an ongoing rift that now includes the Stay at Home Mom versus the Career Woman.
The final chapter is a “Report Card and Prognosis for the Future,” drawing on statistics and reports from various governmental departments and human services organizations. In a nutshell, progress is being made, but there is still a ways to go. The so-called Glass Ceiling and large disparities in pay for the same work between men and women are still major issues that bleed into all other areas of life.
Rising ends the book with many recommendations for continuing the fight for equal rights for women. This is the practical, hands-on portion of the book and there are plenty of important ideas.
No book is perfect, so I feel it fair to point out the following: there is one major editing error, where AIDS is spelled out as Acquired Immune Disease [instead of Deficiency] Syndrome. Also, and more importantly, it is clear by the end that this book is targeted overwhelmingly toward women. That’s kind of like preaching to the choir. Although there is so much excellent information here that women should of course read it, it is really the males of the species that would most benefit from seeing where Church, political, and sociological policies have led us all.

Music Made New: A Review of Cover Stories: A Euphictional Anthology (2010, coverstoriesbook.com)

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:53:00 +0000

A couple of quick bits of business, and we’re off.

1. Euphiction is a new genre wherein authors create “literary covers” of songs. Although many writers have probably been doing this very thing for years, it is formalized by name in this anthology for the first time.
2. I edited the stories by N. Pendleton that appear in this collection. I can take no credit for the success of the stories, or the immense talent of their author. I merely cleaned up the edges… he did all the work.

This excellent collection¬—“100 stories, 10 authors, 1 new genre” (plus an intro by Mike Dawson and an Afterword by Sean P. Murray¬) hints at the future of the short story. Longer, but just as visually rich, as flash fiction, these euphicational stories seek to reproduce the compressed narrative structure of the songs on which they were based.

They read quickly and make a wide arc from ‘80s genre homage and fun-poking to deep, dark, and seedy. Most of the authors offer a microcosm of the larger variety, showing off their dexterity and range, as a good band will in a 10-cut album. Others know their strengths and stick to their time signature and key throughout their 10 tales. Either way, the variety of Voices and Perspectives across the 100 stories is impressive.

Each author is provided a space for “Liner Notes,” revealing the source material (in most cases; some authors were denied copyright for titles or other use, which is unfortunate), their relationship to it, and their reasons for undertaking the project. To their credit, all of the authors bring a humor and lightness to their Liner Notes; if this is the face of the new generation of short story writers, the field is in capable, humble hands.

Some of my favorite stories were Simon Neil’s “A Present,” about a train of Muslims heading from India to Pakistan; Derrek Carriveau’s “Papillon,” concerning a teenage wedding; Christian A. Dumais’ “You Know I’d Never Leave You” about a man who births a baby and “A Hundred Fireflies Outside,” which de- and reconstructs teen slasher/romance flicks (an important piece due to its representing the partial face of post-postmodern literature); “Killing the Past,” “Let Your Mouth Tell the Story,” and “Quarters,” all by A. C. Noia; “Infinity,” “Beauty,” “Wildness” and “Home,” all by Derek Handley; “Listen, It Won’t Rain When I Die,” by Matt Gamble; and N. Pendleton’s “Untitled Track 006—Genre Unknown” and “Untitled Track 009—Genre Unknown,” the latter of which is a reworked excerpt from a (hopefully) forthcoming novel that will set new parameters for what fiction can and should be in the twenty-first century [and just because I’m editing said novel doesn’t make this statement any less true].

As I mentioned in the opening, the creation of Art from other Art is not a new endeavor—in my writing classes I use visual art and film soundtracks as prompts, and poets often pay homage to other poets and poems in their work. I also collaborated recently with a visual artist, writing a series of poems based on her highly symbolic and abstract paintings—some of which were originally inspired by pieces of music or poems (which may also have been inspired by works other works of art), so we have a continuum here that opens up endless possibilities and exciting new realms grounded in older traditions.

At least one author in Cover Stories, Derrek Carriveau, mentions a similar situation. Jack London’s short story “Martin Eden” provides the title to a Twilight Singers song on Blackberry Belle, which in turn influenced the author to write some stories. Other writers also mention writing to music in the past, and Matt Gamble confesses to scrapping his original artist/album when the stories were finished and seeking out a better “fit” for them.

Keeping in mind this situating of the writer in a much larger continuum of Art, Cover Stories provides several things: a new genre; a fertile field of inspiration from which other artists—painters, musicians, other writers—can draw inspiration; and several hours of excellent reading.

How many books can say as much?

“Daring to Be Audacious”: A Review of Richard G. Geldard’s Emerson and the Dream of America

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:23:00 +0000

“Daring to Be Audacious”: A Review of Richard G. Geldard’s Emerson and the Dream of America (Larson Publications, 2010, www.larsonpublications.com; ISBN 978-1-936012-46-4)

As I write this review, the Republican party has just unveiled its new “Pledge to America,” similar to their 1994 Contract With America, which is an interesting and thought-provoking parallel to the title of this book, which, to me, is really two books in one, a notion I would like to explore up front and then move away from.
Richard Geldard, an internationally known expert on the writings of R.W. Emerson, shares his subject’s passion for the state of America, including what is wrong, ideas on how to fix it, and who is to blame. While I agree in theory with much of what Geldard says in chapters such as “A Call to a Nation,” “A New Great Awakening,” “America as Opportunity,” and “Wealth and Economy” I feel compelled to warn the reader that Geldard puts the blame squarely on the Right-Wingers and Republicans and paints what I feel is an overly optimistic portrait of what Barack Obama and his message of hope will do to change the trajectory of our country.
Just to be clear—I am in no way fond of or inclined to make excuses for the past policies of the Bush administration and their cronies, nor can I disagree with Geldard’s recent blogs on the Huffington Post about Glenn Beck and the Tea Party; by the same token, I have many reservations and questions about our current president (none of which have to do with his place of birth…) and I find the author’s level of faith in him and his policies to somewhat taint an otherwise thought-provoking and important book for our times.
Having warned the reader who might share my political concerns, I can move on to the real focus of this review—Geldard’s expert exploration of the most applicable of Emerson’s essays to these Modern Times.
Throughout the preface and the book’s 12 chapters and 2 appendices, I learned a great deal about Emerson and the era in which he was writing that helped put his essays in perspective. For instance, I did not know that, following his daughter’s marriage into the Forbes family of Boston, that Emerson was to become one of the ten wealthiest men in Massachusetts. As one of America’s most quoted and influential philosophers, Emerson is vital to our understanding of ourselves as individuals and as the collective known as “America.”
Whether he is explicating New England Transcendentalism or the Dream of America (as opposed to the American Dream), Geldard does a master’s job of selecting crucial passages from Emerson’s works and setting them in the context of currently pressing issues. He interprets and elaborates on the multi-layered threads in a way that will open these at times difficult to read essays to a much broader audience (hence the irony of his distinct political leanings).
The main essays from which Geldard draws are “Experience,” “Fate,” Nature, and “Self-Reliance.”
As Geldard states, “Emerson himself has been reduced to a purveyor of slogans and aphorisms empty of meaning outside their context” (50). Chapters that best remedy this and reconnect the man with his context are “Emerson and American Religion” and “Idealism and the Perennial Philosophy.” These chapters not only situate Emerson in his own time, but track his intellectual and spiritual connection to those who also went on to influence modern thought, such as Aldous Huxley and Ananda Comaraswamy. It was a surprise to me just how much Emerson was in tune with the nexus of Spirituality and Science—what is now called Quantum Mechanics (explored with increasing emphasis through chapters 5–7).
The two appendices contain passages from Emerson’s works with no commentary. These sections will hopefully serve as a bridge for readers who want to return to Emerson’s writings with a new perspective having read Geldard’s book or perhaps those who follow the recommendation of this reviewer and read Emerson and the Dream of America as their introduction to one of the most important philosopher-writers our country has ever known.

A Special Review for the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Publication of Lex Hixon’s Living Buddha Zen

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:20:00 +0000

(Larson Publications, 1995)

Lex Hixon was a fascinating individual. He studied five religions (he was an initiated Sufi Sheikh, a practicing member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and was about to be inducted as a priest in the Soto Zen order when he died in 1995) and published seven books. He received his doctorate in world religions from Columbia University. For 13 years he hosted WBAI’s “In the Spirit” radio program, during which time he interviewed both Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama.
Living Buddha Zen is a commentary on Zen Master Keizan’s Denkoroku: The Record of Transmitting the Light, written in the fourteenth century.
Like most Zen works, with their premise that “ultimately knowing nothing always eclipses knowing anything” (p. 13), this book, and no doubts its predecessor, can be a difficult and oftentimes frustrating read, considering as it does highly abstract concepts such as “nonduality,” “mind,” and “enlightenment,” but Hixon encourages the reader to stay with it with his exuberant and straightforward style of writing. As he says in the Foreword, “questioning… is integral to the practice… Living Buddha Zen is a book of questions” (p. 13).
Being a commentary and meditation on Keizan’s book, Hixon takes the koans (questions that in some sense have no answers, such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”) and lectures of the Master and adds his own understanding, including a concluding poem at the end of each of the 52 “transmissions” from one Living Buddha to the next in the Shakyamuni tradition.
The life stories in the Author Introduction of some of these Living Buddhas are truly fascinating. Many were attendants to their predecessors; one gave his eye to a blind beggar while another severed his own arm to cut the root of separate body and mind; yet another did not sleep for three years. At least one was married and had a child, while others lived in caves and monasteries. With each transmission, the understanding of the Living Buddha was thought to grow and deepen, as knowledge was continually accumulated and passed on.
The 52 transmissions are laid out the same, with a koan, a comment, and a closing poem. I used them as daily meditations, reading the koan in the morning, the comment in the afternoon, and the closing poem before sleeping. Although they run only a few pages each, there is much to consider and reading a transmission in a single sitting risks missing the multi-layered meanings and messages.
The following are some of the nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned (and meditated upon):

• “any attempt to exterminate personhood is a spiritual sickness, like anorexia” (p. 52)
• “To exercise any occult power or to immerse the mind in any finite doctrine is to be bound and dragged by a rope” (p. 58; emphasis in original)
• “Student and teacher are like intersecting cords in a fishing net—nodes, not separate strands” (p. 63)
• “Performing nothing is Buddha activity” (p. 121)
• “No one can realize Truth, which is utterly simple, without becoming utterly simple” (p. 157)
• “Even the most subtle sense of self-satisfaction must disappear into laughter” (p. 162)
• “I cannot become it/because it is already me” (p. 184)
• “Here is where you must arrive!” (p. 198)

There is one passage which must be related at length, containing as it does the wonderful mystery of which Hixon speaks so eloquently:

“The father of the young successor introduces his son, Sita, to the present Buddha, explaining that the boy was born with left fist clenched. This strange condition still persists. The Awakened One explains the hidden karmic cause. In a previous existence, Buddha Aryasinha, at that time a simple Buddhist monk, received a small crystal of Perfect Nondual Wisdom, offered to him by the Naga kings of the Western Ocean. The monk entrusted this priceless wisdom treasure to a certain young man named Basia, who guarded it with great loyalty. ‘Now give me back that original gem,’ the present Buddha calmly asks, and immediately Sita’s left hand opens, for the first time since birth, releasing a clear stone.” (p. 124)

Living Buddha Zen ends with a Lineage Chart of the 82 Buddha Ancestors, of which Lex Hixon [Jikai] is the last to be listed. The chart shows the migration from India, to China, Japan, and America.
Although my shelves are filled with many volumes that consider the Great Mystery under many names and disciplines, this is perhaps the most adept at showing that “It is an open secret, concealed only by its complete transparency” (p. 218).

“Walker Between the Worlds”: A Review of Timekeeper II

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:08:00 +0000

“Walker Between the Worlds”: A Review of Timekeeper II, by John Atkinson (September 2010, Fisher King Press, www.fisherkingpress.com) ISBN: 978-1-926715-11-7

Thirteen months ago I had the opportunity to read and review Timekeeper, the prequel to this new work from author John Atkinson.

In Timekeeper II, the protagonist, Johnnyboy/Timekeeper, continues the journey begun in the first book, although, because of his vision quest on the Sacred Mountain, he can now live up to his Native American–bestowed name and unfold his tale on multiple planes and through multiple blocks of time.

This extra angle adds much to the second book, as Timekeeper, through his first-person narration, takes the reader back in time to experience events only hinted at in the first book. His experience of prejudice and intolerance from both sides of the family as a half-blood Indian are revealed in poignant vignettes, called up as Timekeeper makes a second journey in an effort to better understand his heritage and embrace his role as storyteller (complicated by the fact that he is illiterate for most of the early part of his life).

His ability to seek information through dreams and visions breaks the bounds of traditional storytelling and brings the reader across nearly a century of U.S. history as it relates to the mistreatment of Native Americans by the military and the local townsfolk. Johnnyboy’s struggle to find common ground between the traditional beliefs of his mother and the Christianity of his father’s people provides a lesson for us all.

Readers interested in Native American (specifically Sioux) ceremonies such as sweat lodge and sun dance will find the narrative particularly appealing, as will students of shamanism.

Atkinson’s prose is in fine form, with plenty more of the colorful expressions (“worshippers spread out in pews like crushed red pepper on barbequed ribs”) that made the first book such a delight to read. Although the narrative operates on multiple planes and loops back on itself numerous times from present to past, to further past, there is always a clear indication of just where we are.

As Timekeeper’s sequel came to an end, I realized that Johnnyboy, still a teenager, has plenty of stories left to tell.

I look forward to following him wherever—and whenever—he may go.

“Walker Between the Worlds”: A Review of Timekeeper II

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:07:00 +0000

“Walker Between the Worlds”: A Review of Timekeeper II, by John Atkinson (September 2010, Fisher King Press, www.fisherkingpress.com) ISBN: 978-1-926715-11-7

By Joey Madia

Thirteen months ago I had the opportunity to read and review Timekeeper, the prequel to this new work from author John Atkinson.

In Timekeeper II, the protagonist, Johnnyboy/Timekeeper, continues the journey begun in the first book, although, because of his vision quest on the Sacred Mountain, he can now live up to his Native American–bestowed name and unfold his tale on multiple planes and through multiple blocks of time.

This extra angle adds much to the second book, as Timekeeper, through his first-person narration, takes the reader back in time to experience events only hinted at in the first book. His experience of prejudice and intolerance from both sides of the family as a half-blood Indian are revealed in poignant vignettes, called up as Timekeeper makes a second journey in an effort to better understand his heritage and embrace his role as storyteller (complicated by the fact that he is illiterate for most of the early part of his life).

His ability to seek information through dreams and visions breaks the bounds of traditional storytelling and brings the reader across nearly a century of U.S. history as it relates to the mistreatment of Native Americans by the military and the local townsfolk. Johnnyboy’s struggle to find common ground between the traditional beliefs of his mother and the Christianity of his father’s people provides a lesson for us all.

Readers interested in Native American (specifically Sioux) ceremonies such as sweat lodge and sun dance will find the narrative particularly appealing, as will students of shamanism.

Atkinson’s prose is in fine form, with plenty more of the colorful expressions (“worshippers spread out in pews like crushed red pepper on barbequed ribs”) that made the first book such a delight to read. Although the narrative operates on multiple planes and loops back on itself numerous times from present to past, to further past, there is always a clear indication of just where we are.

As Timekeeper’s sequel came to an end, I realized that Johnnyboy, still a teenager, has plenty of stories left to tell.

I look forward to following him wherever—and whenever—he may go.

“Meditations on Death”: A Review of Bobbi Lurie’s Grief Suite

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:44:00 +0000

(forthcoming from CW Books, May 2010)

Bobbi Lurie writes poetry that hurts.

Grief Suite follows the decline and deaths of its subjects with unflinching honesty. From the sterile hospitals rooms and invasive procedures that fill them to the exposure of decaying family dynamics through the course of illness and its aftermath, Lurie takes the reader on a journey through guilt, anger, denial, accusation—aspects of the “five stages” so many counselors talk about. But after reading this collection of free-verse and prose poetry, the truth seems to be that when it comes to Grief, nothing is cut and dry enough to be categorized.

It must be simply lived. Or, truer still—survived.

The collection begins with “Traveling North,” a prose poem that uses strings of image-phrases that call to mind Kerouac’s Mexico City works and Burroughs’s cut-up style. The punctuation works like a drum beating the battle-rhythm before the carnage. (In a later poem she writes: “I fragment short prayers, picking at the worded wounds.”)

The poem as prayer is most clearly present in “This Amputated Place is My Soul, Lord,” operating more as a mantra-meditation than a traditional Christian invocation.

Death, as it is so often, is tangled up in an essence of Love that is dark, dangerous, and unromantic, as best represented in the poem “Codependent Nation.” The speaker is represented by the small “i” as she speaks of how she “met my first love/at the vending machine/in the mental hospital.” The poem, which runs half a dozen pages, keeps the reader off-kilter and engaged with its varying rhythms, line breaks, and use and absence of punctuation. The imagery is unencumbered by typical mechanisms that might clutter it up or make it more palatable.

There are stories here that Lurie needs to tell, and we need to hear (“In print she says every/thing/In life she’s contrite”).

I was particularly intrigued by the subtle senses at work in all of the darkness of the poems. Purple and yellow are often mentioned, as well as scents like perfume.

The title poem, “Grief Suite,” begs numerous readings due to its length and complexity. The reader gets a clear sense of the Process grief entails. Like the earlier poems, it again felt as though there is a crushing weight that only these words can lift.

The poem details the dying and death of a mother, an event which brings to Light and Life the childhood memories and present contentions in the mother–daughter, mother–sons, sons–daughter relationships. It reads like a diary, and the reader is very much Voyeur, invited or not. There is much here that will be familiar to anyone who has experienced a similar death event in their family, especially if one sibling stayed behind to care for the parent while the rest went off into the world.

Two of the poems, “Once My Heart was Wide and Loved the World” and “Tossed Out Box of Treasured Possessions” function like sutras in the form of two-line meditations and dialogues:

“Black spots of cancer.

Like a small boy pointing a magnifying glass to an insect.
Interested in the way the body burns.” (from “Once My Heart”)

“And what will you do with the rest of your possessions?
I will never collect possessions again.” (from “Tossed Out Box”)

The final three poems, “Rasa,” “Waking in Old Age,” and “Soft Fibers Adorn the Diminishing Landscape” are beautiful, disturbing poems with stark language resulting in a power of imagery that recalls the lone swinging bulb in an otherwise darkened room. Nurses bring their “crude humor” as they joke about the patient’s incontinence… Although we know they are searching for self-defense, it is disturbing nonetheless.

Grief Suite is beautiful and light in all of its ugliness and dark.

A Review of Dr. Bud Harris’s Resurrecting the Unicorn: Masculinity in the 21st Century

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:58:00 +0000

(Fisher King Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-981034-40-9)

By Joey Madia

There is little doubt that in the nearly 20 years between the publication of Robert Bly’s Iron John and the re-publication/re-vision of Resurrecting the Unicorn by Fisher King Press (it was previously published under the title Emasculation of the Unicorn: The Loss and Rebuilding of Masculinity in America) that the dilemmas faced by the postmodern man have only grown more complex.

Notice the change from “Emasculation” to “Resurrecting” in the title. It certainly makes the book more PC and less potentially off-putting, and this bears out in the text. This is not a radical manifesto on the loss of the masculine but a thought-provoking examination of just where the true essence of Manhood went off the rails. There is an excellent case made for journeying through the Feminine Principle in order to arrive at the Masculine, an idea championed by Carl Jung and countless Eastern mystics. This is about Balance and Inclusion, not machismo and misogyny.

Working in a way very similar to Bly, Dr. Harris has substituted Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Tinder Box” for the Grimm tale “Iron John” used in the book by the same title. Far from being a mere “knock-off” or homage of someone else’s way of exploring this subject, there is a strong case here for more exercises where Masculinity/Manhood are deconstructed and dialogued through the use of fairy tales.

Mythologists and critical thinkers from Bruno Bettelheim to Joseph Campbell have made a compelling case for the relevance of fairy tales to all of us, male or female, and Dr. Harris makes a substantial contribution to this field of study by illuminating many symbols and rendering readings through his deconstruction of “The Tinder Box” that were new to this reader.

Although the bulk of the book is devoted to in-depth work with “The Tinder Box,” there is much more going on. It is appropriate in this time of questionable wars and the mis-use of the masculine around the globe that Dr. Harris raises the ghost of John Wayne (the quintessential male for my grandfathers’ generation) and dispels many of the misunderstandings about this complex model of manhood.

Picking up from the fairy tale thread established in the first three-thirds of the book, the ending chapters look closely at the symbolism of the Unicorn and Lion and what men must do to make the most of these totem powers living within us. The section on Eros and Logos is thought-provoking and situates the text squarely in the realm of science rather than pure emotion. Rites of passage and the necessity of mothers and fathers better fulfilling their complementary roles when raising their sons (and daughters) bring to mind another of Bly’s books, The Sibling Society.

In closing, Resurrecting the Unicorn is essential reading for college-age young men and fathers. It’s an excellent companion to Iron John and a renewed call to revisit the Men’s Movement that rose up suddenly and died just as quickly in the 1990s. This time, perhaps, armed with both books and twenty more years of experience, we will do a little better.

“Crossing the Boundaries, Real and Imagined”: A Review of Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s Water the Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:12:00 +0000

(Forthcoming from Marick Press, 2010, http://www.marickpress.com,
Price: $14.95, ISBN 13: 978-1-934851-12-8)

In the past 12 months I have had the opportunity to review several collections written by poets who are producing works stemming from their condition of being a Westerner in the East or vice versa. The time for such catalogued experiences is certainly ripe—with the United States and Asia having no choice but to come to terms with one another economically and otherwise, and the growing realization (from a small but potent population) that the future of our world must exist in a place that honors Uniqueness without fortifying Boundaries, such dichotomy-breaking insights are keys to the doors of New Possibility.

Who better to keep those keys than the modern poet?

From Sze-Lorrain’s bio we learn the following: She was born in Singapore and “grew up in a hybrid of cultures.” She attended school in Britain, the United States, and France. She has performed worldwide as a zheng concertist and released a CD in 2009. She is an editor at Cerise Press and a translator, and writes non-fiction as well as fiction.

With such a varied education, artistic background, and cultural palette, Sze-Lorrain is ideally suited to represent the vanguard in what so many of us hope will be a braver new world. Water the Moon, her first poetry collection, sheds light on what such a world might be.

The book opens with a couplet from Li Po, and proceeds in its opening section, “Biography of Hunger,” to explore the sensual experiences of the author as she watches her grandmother “water the moon,” creating a culinary delight with historical ties to the Emperor Chu Yuan-chang 600 years before.

History, and one’s country-based sense of place within it (and ultimately outside of and beyond it), provides the roads on which she navigates in poems with titles such as “Shoebox Filled with Mao Buttons,” “Tibet,” “A Talk with Mao Tse-tung,” and “Odyssey.” Highlights of this section are the prose-like poems “The Sun Temple” [“I pause at a hermit’s rococo cave, now revamped/as a Bed and Breakfast”] and “The Unrecorded Days” [“In this world, every rendez-vous existed before the very beginning”].

The second section moves westward, and is entitled “Dear Paris.” Here the poet is at first the stranger in a strange land, laying out her prayer:

I come to you for salvation,
old and delicate,
aging yet timeless

The poems progress to a sense of her finding the familiar in the new, again in the culinary arts, as expressed in “Breakfast, Rue Sainte-Anne,” where the worlds of East and West are clearly connected by the ending lines.

With this newfound footing, the poems gain a surety of self-in-place, as Sze-Lorrain experiences architecture, art, and love (all symbolized through the recurring themes of moon and water), until she can once again look at Geography through the lens of History in “A Brief History of Time.”

The once-stranger is now at home, and her many interests and aspects flow ever more seamlessly together, where the preparation of food is likened to Flaubert’s use of commas and verses are flavored with myriad cultural references from around the world.

It seeming fitting to call the last section of Water the Moon its “third act,” as it is very much a poetic exploration of art, artists, and broader-ranged thinkers. From Albert Einstein to Man Ray, Edith Piaf to Picasso [and his Muse, Dora Maar], Van Gogh, and Chopin, Sze-Lorrain employs her knowledge of history and geography to situate her own artistic sensibilities and sensualities with theirs. The final section, entitled, “The Key Always Opens,” goes on to explore the relationship of Samuel Beckett with his own Muse, Suzanne, after he was stabbed by a pimp in 1938 [“Be My Bride”].

In a bit of fun, the collection offers “A Lot had Happened: A Five Act Play,” an homage to Gertrude Stein’s satire of the rigid form of 5-act plays before visiting the photographs of Steichen and the “ruach” of Romanian poet Paul Celan.

The collection ends with a poem titled “Instructions: No Meeting No World,” which ties all of the themes and artistic forms of the book together, summed up in the sentiment:

“Prefer rivers to regrets. Two of them happen
to meet outside the window.”

The confluence of two rivers is known to be a magical place, full of supernatural occurrences and triumphs and tragedies of equal measure and memory.

Add a shining night-disc above, and you begin to understand the power and meaning of Water the Moon.

A Review of This Hungry Spirit: Your Need for Basic Goodness by C. Clinton Sidle (Larson Publications, 2009, www.larsonpublications.com)

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:52:00 +0000

In today’s self-help book market, finding something new is becoming harder and harder. In many ways, it’s all been said before, and often times far better, by far wiser people.

It was with this challenge in mind that I began reading C. Clinton Sidle’s This Hungry Spirit. The year was coming to an end, I had thoughts of resolutions and self-betterment for 2010 at the forefront of my mind, and as I shuffled through the stack of books I had to review, it seemed like as good a choice as any.

Sidle’s credentials are impressive. He is director of the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows Program in the Johnson School of Management at Cornell, as well as being a leading authority on leadership, executive coaching, and developing human potential and author of two other books.

So what was different about This Hungry Spirit?

First and foremost, I found Sidle’s honesty about his personal life and challenges to be genuine to an extent that I have not seen in a long time in books such as this. While most self-help gurus employ anecdote to connect with the reader and illustrate the effectiveness of what they are teaching, there is often a sense of “talking down” or the author being so much farther ahead than the reader.

Sidle seems quite at ease with the fact that he is a “work in progress,” so it was easy to identify with and trust him—and by extension, his advice.

The book is a mix of explicative text, numerous (and genuinely helpful!) exercises, and, in the margins, post-it-like text excerpts that not only serve to review important points but offer the reader the opportunity to go back to This Hungry Spirit over and over again for advice, daily meditations, and reinforcement.

So what is this book all about?

In a nutshell, This Hungry Spirit explores the pursuit of happiness and the fulfillment of need that are the underlying higher motivations for any human being trying to actualize his or her full potential.

But what do we do? More often than not, once the lower needs are met, we pursue societal notions of “success”—an important job, high pay, awards and accolades, the accumulation of Things. But it is clear that many people (most?) with these items checked off their list are still not happy; still not fulfilled.

Similar to Ram Dass’s writings and lectures about seva (service) and Deepak Chopra’s advice to give, and give freely, of yourself, Sidle implores the reader to live in service to others in order to better meet the needs of service to self. This is an important idea and as the co-founder of a non-profit service organization, I can say without hesitation that it works.

As I mentioned earlier, the book mixes instructional text with practical exercises that rival anything that you would experience working with a therapist. There are a total of 39 of these exercises throughout the book and a “Leadership Wheel Assessment” in the Appendix. Each is designed to help deconstruct old mental models and build new ones, and the reader is often encouraged to go back and look at old exercises, which makes it easy to mark your progress.

The book is user-friendly and filled with upbeat and motivational section headings such as “Reap the lessons of adversity” and “When in doubt, return to your purpose.”

Besides the personal anecdotes, I found the selection of parables and bits of Eastern wisdom to be a delight to read. Sidle has done a masterful job of choosing them.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that there were a large amount of typos in the book, which is unusual for Larson Publications. I hope that these will be corrected in a future edition, as the book is simply too good to be bogged down by missing or misspelled words.

In the final assessment, This Hungry Spirit truly is a well-balanced, well-written, and very practical guide to feeding our souls and increasing our happiness. Its benefits to the reader are considerable.

“Far from the Fool”: A Review of John Gartland’s Gravity’s Fool (2009, Assumption University Press, ISBN: 974-615-242-4)

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:25:00 +0000

“Far from the Fool”: A Review of John Gartland’s Gravity’s Fool (2009, Assumption University Press, ISBN: 974-615-242-4)

by Joey Madia

Many a modern poet has stacks of unsold books filling the corners of his or her writing room. This is a matter of both competition as well as the lamentable lack of interest in poetry in today’s reader. Perhaps as condensed forms of Communication continue to emerge, based on the requirements of Social Networking sites, poetry will re-take its place in readers’ daily lives.

In the meantime, it is good to know that some poets, such as John Gartland, are putting out additional editions of their titles. This fourth edition, published by Assumption University Press, features a new final poem and a few words by Steve Conlon, Dean of the Graduate school, about Gartland’s collaboration with Tom Hodgins (Poetry Universe 1: Poetry without Frontiers, which I will be reviewing later this year).

Gartland is a novelist, playwright, and poet, and a founding member of the Poetry ID writers’ workshop in England. He is a teacher of writing who has taught in Bagkok, Thailand and now in Chungbuk, Korea.

His poetry resonates with the self-sure voice of the man from the West who has journeyed to the East and is working to assimilate where he has been and where he now is into adjoining and at times overlapping landscapes. His breadth of travel is complemented by his breadth of knowledge. His poems are full of literary and geographical references that ground and gird his ideas and visions, creating a tension of Concrete and Abstract that sings sharply in the modern poetic form.

He begins the collection with the following haiku:

Those headlights in the
mirror are your death, so keep
your foot on the gas

The Death theme, that elder companion of the poet from Keats to Corso, abounds in Gravity’s Fool, tied to landscapes and relationships, to love and the relentless pursuit of life. One gets the sense that Gartland, having participated in loss in so many of its forms, is seeing with new eyes, drinking up and cataloging images the young and ignorant rarely note, much less process. To read “Nothing but the River (the Thames at Wandsworth Bridge)” is to witness the flotsam and jetsam of time’s running waters in all of their intermixed ugliness and light.

“Poetry ID” illuminates for the reader some of Gartland’s raw material on his journey to the condition of Poet, after having heard the familiar words put upon all (good) young poets by their mentors: “It’s all right, but live some more./You need to go out and live some more.”

And so he did.

Being a teacher of the craft, Gartland explores the condition of the writing outside of his own experience as writer, most notably in the poems “Poetry Escapes during Questioning” (a nice companion piece to Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” should you be a poetry teacher looking for perspectives on the craft to give your students), “Chez Parnassus,” and “The Company of Poets.”

Gartland’s experience as playwright informs the poem “Letter to John Wilson,” which is a worthy challenge to the well-trained actor looking for less-traveled, multi-leveled monologues. This poem leads a section devoted in great part to Death. Death of love and death of family. Death of epoch and of edifice. All woven together with a subtle similarity in phrase that begs pointing out:

“the plumes of rising steam” (“Letter to John Wilson”)

“we drift away, like smoke” (“Retrospective [for Lyall Watson]”)

“turf smoke rising like incense” (“Gatestown”)

“haze/that drifts upon the Partry Mountains” (“Song of the Undertaker’s Men”)

All of these poems set up the series of the next three poems, dealing with Gartland’s daughter Laura. As the father of a ten-year-old girl, I found these poems in all of their simple beauty, enviable connection, fine art, and lingering ghosts to be some of the best of this collection.

As I mentioned earlier, this fourth edition ends with a new poem, called “The Market in Cheongju. Night.” What was most striking with the placement of this new piece is the sea-change it signals for the book.

The previous final poem, “Jesting Twilight,” ended with the phrase “I am waiting.” “The Market…,” by contrast, ends with “crash the iron bolts,” bringing to mind Whitman’s “Unscrew the locks from the doors/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs” that serves as an epigram to Ginsberg’s Howl.

Gartland is no longer content to wait, and we, as his fellow travelers on this road of poems, mustn’t either.

Gravity’s Fool reaffirms for the long-time practitioner of the poet’s art just what good poetry really is and the life-work that all worthy craftsmen must put in; therefore it is also essential reading for the young poet first embarking on his or her path of words and their inevitable wounds and wonders.

“The Perils of a Prophecy”: A Review of Kit Berry’s Solstice at Stonewylde

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:01:00 +0000

(Moongazy Publishing, 2007, www.stonewylde.com) by Joey Madia

In the past two years I have had the pleasure of reading and reviewing the first two books in the Stonewylde series, Magus of Stonewylde and Moondance of Stonewylde. With the plot well in motion and the stakes raised to an almost unbearable height, I eagerly began reading what was to be the final book in the cycle, Solstice at Stonewylde.

It did not disappoint.

The most psychological of the three books, Solstice slows down the action as compared to the first two, considering the larger issues of power and wealth and just how far a person will go to obtain them. What is willingly left behind, what natural alliances are so easily broken, just how much of a price in soul and spirit we find ourselves willing to pay are all explored through scenes of mental and physical torture that leave the reader hoping that some heroic character will come bursting through the door to save the day.

But just like in life, no one comes, because no one can.

I want to tread carefully here, and in no way reveal plot points that might ruin the reader’s experience, so please forgive the generalities. As a fan of the trilogy, and of Kit Berry’s considerable skill and imagination, I will refrain from dwelling on content and focus instead on form.

The exploration of numerous story lines at once, in the great Tolkienesque tradition, is employed in Solstice with more irregularity and yet more power than in the previous two books. Long stretches of text focus on a pair of characters, driving home their isolation and alliance and literally leaving other key characters out in the growing cold; characters we feel for all the more for their absence.

I was very pleased with the revealing of secrets in the book. This is immensely difficult over the course of a trilogy, as so much information must be shared by the author and so many IOUs that were written to the reader (as my college writing professor would say) must be paid that it is hard not to employ a load of misdirection. As in life, some secrets were no surprise at all, and others were all the more surprising for having resided with characters who played seeming second fiddle throughout the previous books. As a writer who works in this genre, I learned a lot about how to make this work.

A few words must be said about the fulfillment of the prophecy that hangs especially sharp over the second book. Again, prophecies, related as they are to the creation and unveiling of secrets, are hard to do well, as evidenced by the seventh Potter book. Inevitability is darned hard to make interesting, and yet it is what the writer must do. Kudos to Kit Berry for doing it well.

In the closing chapters, Berry uses some interesting changes in voice and perspective as events are reaching their climax. These techniques serve the story well, enhancing and heightening the drama without resorting to a bunch of sidelines to drag things out.

As I said in the opening, this was to be the final book in the series, but there is a note at the end of Solstice informing readers that we can expect two more. Refreshingly, all will not be cozy and kind at Prophecy’s end.

With such a strong concept, magical land, and so many aspects of the vivid characters of Stonewylde still waiting to be explored, why should it be?

A Review of Journey to the Heart, by Nora Caron (2008, Fisher King Press, www.fisherkingpress.com)

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:11:00 +0000

A Review of Journey to the Heart, by Nora Caron (2008, Fisher King Press, www.fisherkingpress.com)

In this time of complexity and endless challenge, I have come to truly appreciate a good, well-told tale of spiritual quest and growth.

Journey to the Heart, by debut novelist Nora Caron, is just such a book.

Her main character, Lucina (“illumination”; the Roman goddess of childbirth), has a lousy job, an overbearing mother, and a poor history with men. Needing to get away and gain some perspective, she goes to Mexico City.

Fans of the Mel Mathews books LeRoi, Menopause Man, and Samsara (also from Fisher King Press) may recognize what could easily pass for the female Malcolm Clay. Here she is, in a country not her own (she is Canadian) and she is crass and sarcastic, disparaging the ways and customs of the locals and asking herself such things about her host as “Did she want to murder her? Turn her into a human burrito or something?” (p. 16). This is in reference to Señora Labotta, a mystical woman whom Lucina thinks of initially as a “witch.”

The good Señora, undaunted by Lucina’s ignorance (“Canadians … You are all the same. You do not get it right way: too intellectual, too caught up in the head…”; p. 15) invites her to camp on her land, earning her keep by tending to the garden. Soon after, she meets Teleo (“logic”), the son of the Señora, who is training to be a medicine man. Lucina immediately falls for him.

No doubt the reader sees where this is going. And in many ways, it does. Caron adds some interesting devices to spice it up and keep it new, though. There is the constant voice of her therapist, Dr. Field, which plays both confirmation and counterpoint to what Señora Labotta and Teleo try to teach Lucina. This seesawing of perspectives is nowhere stronger than in Lucina’s heart, and, again like Malcolm Clay, she is given to taking two steps forward and three steps back.

There is also a considerable portion of the last half of the book that consists of Lucina sharing the details of her past losses in love. While somewhat unexpected, this device works well, mostly because the stories are interesting and easy to relate to (the Señora says “your love stories are humanity’s stories,” p. 193). This, I think, is the point of Lucina’s vacillations and at times frustrating density. She is like most of us—wanting change but so afraid to do what it takes to make it happen; to seize the opportunities put before us by larger forces, so we retreat to well-worn paths and old mistakes.

My favorite parts of the novel had to do with the trips Lucina and Teleo take to ancient Mesoamerican sites, and the cultural/historical information that Caron shares through them. The symbols that are sprinkled throughout the book become concentrated in these sections, giving the reader an opportunity to consider them deeply at times while always having them in the background at others.

The novel’s end is far from definitive, which again made me think of the Malcolm Clay trilogy and how things in the real world never really are. The constant push and pull of our “calling” or “fate” or “path” is a complicated process, which Journey to the Heart succeeds in capturing, offering the reader ample incentive to keep on trying to get there.

“A Guiding Light in Interesting Times”: A Review of The Toltec I Ching: 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:10:00 +0000

by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden (Larson Publications, 2009, www.larsonpublications.com)

There is an ancient Eastern curse that says “May you live in interesting times.”

A quick glance at the daily headlines tells us that, a decade or so into the twenty-first century, these times certainly fit the bill.

As an artist who uses the principles of shamanism and aspects of other spiritual systems to both create and to teach, I am always looking for new sources of inspiration and insight. As a father, husband, and mentor to young people, I am continually seeking means to clarification and ways of making sense and gaining peace in highly stressful and complicated times.

Over the past two decades, I have found ways of using tarot, runes, and other devices to help. I have stayed away from the I Ching because of all the many tools for insight and divination, I have found the hexagrams and casting of the coins to be complicated and hard to make sense of.

The authors of The Toltec I Ching, Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden, have changed that with this brand new book. I found their text both enlightening and easy to follow, and their approach of marrying a Chinese system with a Mesoamerican one yields abundant fruit.

First, a few words about the authors. Ramirez-Oropeza, according to the dust cover, is “a mural painter, a performer in popular theatre, and a researcher/lecturer of the Nahuatl pre-Hispanic codices of Mexico.” Nahuatl, according to several sources, is a language that traces back to the Aztecs. The word itself is translated as “good, clear sound.” Horden “has researched indigenous divinatory systems of ancient China and Mexico with passion and independence since 1969. He is steeped in the shamanic world view.”

Perhaps it is because the authors and I are kindred spirits that the book spoke so clearly and resonantly to me. We certainly do come from similar paths. The promotional materials sent by the publisher reference The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and the Peaceful Warrior books by Dan Millman, which sit well-worn and many-times-read on my bookshelf. They have become old friends, as The Toltec I Ching no doubt shall.

What is new and key to this book is the focus on Balance. East and West, Masculine and Feminine, the 64 hexagram paintings and descriptions move away from the male, aristocratic biases that have mired the I Ching in the past, and call strongly upon the feminine creative principle in providing much-needed guidance.

The book, with its Mesoamerican influences, also situates its contents in the coming of December 21, 2012, when the Mayan calendar ends one age in anticipation of another. Writers such as John Major Jenkins and Daniel Pinchbeck see 2012 as the doorway to a new evolutionary and spiritual time for humanity, and I hope that this book will join with theirs to help educate those who have misunderstood 2012 as a time of cataclysm and Armageddon. A quick scroll through the History Channel listings or the anticipation around a new movie coming out this December illustrate that for every philosopher-shaman that sees 2012 as a time of opportunity and positive change there are others who want to use it to breed fear and make a few dollars playing into it.

Now to the substance of the book.

The opening material is clear, concise, and uplifting. The “Introduction” details all of the aspects of the authors’ process and rationale for combining the two systems that I have thus far mentioned. The “Casting and Interpreting the Oracle” section takes the reader through the process from casting the coins to producing the hexagrams that will guide the reading. As I mentioned, there is no complicated language or convoluted steps as one often finds in previous I Ching manuals. I was casting my first coins not very long after cracking the spine.

The hexagram paintings are, in a word, beautiful. For me, this is important, as I use half a dozen different decks of tarot for inspiration and creation, all chosen for the meditative and conscious dreaming potential of their artwork. The paintings translate the Toltec tenets, symbols, and ways of living into spiritually stimulating visuals that merge with the prose explanations on several levels of resonation.

The text explanations are broken into sections that will be familiar to users of the tarot. They are Image, Interpretation, Action, Intent, and Summary. I have found, after multiple readings, that the Line Change explanations that follow these sections, which have confused me in past experiences with the I Ching, offer action-oriented guidance for bridging the present and future aspects of each reading. Being that I have come to see divinatory tools as “organizing principles” as I seek help in fulfilling my many roles, the Line Change explanations are one of the highlights of the book.

I have used The Toltec I Ching to gain clarity and direction for several important aspects of my life that are sitting on the cusp of vital change in the past several weeks and I find it to be a great help. I have come away from a reading feeling empowered, with a heart full of guiding principles to apply as I navigate my way through the personal, professional, global, and universal changes that are at work in my life.

I heart-fully recommend this book to users of divinatory tools, those interested in the symbol systems of the Toltecs, Aztecs, and Mayans, and those who see or wish to see 2012 and the twenty-first century as a time, not of curses and apocalypse, but of great opportunity for humanity to enter a new and blessed phase of existence.

A Review of Nota Bene Eiswein, by Eileen R. Tabios (ahadada books, 2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:38:00 +0000

Eileen Tabios is a poetic force to be reckoned with.

Since 1996 she has written or edited some 30 poetry, short story, and prose collections. Her own press, Meritage, is continually producing groundbreaking, vital poetry that not only explores new realms of poetic expression, such as the hay(na)ku, which she invented, but brings a multicultural, Diasporic voice to the forefront of modern poetics.

Her latest collection, Nota Bene Eiswein, continues to mine new areas of inspiration, as she “excavates” the writings of the poet Christian Hawkey and the novelist Sara Bird.

The title, translated as “Note Well Ice Wine,” is explained in the Notes to Poems on page 109, as well as the source material and methods Tabios worked from to create the two halves of this collection, titled “Ice: Behind the Eyelet Veil” and “Wine—The Singer and Others—Flamenco Hay(na)ku.”

In “Ice,” Tabios works in a number of forms, using Hawkey’s poetry as a launching point while mixing in additional source material as she works. Examples include everything from randomly opening and then quoting from Carol Drinkwater’s The Olive Harvest to lyrics pulled from the 2008 “American Idol” finals. This kind of playfulness and spontaneity in the midst of complex forms and techniques makes Tabios’ poetry accessible in ways that it might otherwise miss.

“Wine” is all about flamenco (“the music of drunkards and prostitutes,” p. 56), opening with a quote from Federico Garcia Lorca and employing its hay(na)ku structure to created a heat-filled, energetic, and whirlwind representation of the spirited dance that is its subject. Within these fiery ink-songs we learn about the Flamenco Ten Commandments (seven of which must not be revealed to outsiders) and such illustrious practitioners as Carmen Amaya, whose talent led her to the big screen as well as to Washington, DC, where she danced for FDR and Harry Truman. The poems “Sangre Negra/Black Blood,” “Dark Freedom,” and “Bait the Dark Angel By” are the highlights of this section.

In reading and reviewing several of Eileen Tabios’ collections, I have often been struck by her ability to take large themes and subjects, such as Diaspora and flamenco, and bring them around to her own vision and mission as a poet and artist. In “The Singer” she writes,

the worst thing
one can
say

about someone in
flamenco? No
me

dice nada. He
didn’t say
anything

to me… (pg. 68)

On the facing page, directly opposite, she writes,

…Do
you know
what

would be the
worst thing
said

about my poetry?
I created
nothing

that moved you.

Her passion and efforts for connection with the reader make all the difference here. Although Tabios is coming from a place of High Art, there is nothing ivory tower about her poetics. This is a balance that both the street poets and academics should be seeking if we are to revitalize our worth as poets.

In the poem “As If the Poet Loves Everything and Everyone” the parallels between poetry and flamenco are explored more fully, twisting and turning around the line “So dance me a poem.”

Dance me a poem. Are we as poets—and as readers—able to take that challenge?

“Wine” ends with the beautifully rendered story-poem “La Loca,” a piece that had my mind racing with thoughts of multimedia stagings in a place where spoken words meet music, imagery, shadow and light, in a culmination of what Tabios has explored in previous pages.

Nota Bene Eiswein ends with a two-page exploration of “Tattoo Poetics,” yet another new form that has come out of the creative atmosphere that exists because of Eileen Tabios and her willingness to “excavate” unexplored mines of material and meaning.