Frederick Glaysher, Poems, Essays, Reviews, Earthrise Press

Frederick Glaysher

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
--John Milton, Areopagitica: For the Liberty of Vnlicenc’d Printing

"A poet now whose work and dedication to a demanding and difficult art I admire; a man who has the gift of inner grace." --Robert Hayden

The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture
“New Titles Elected for Essay and General Literature Index,” September 2007, H. W. Wilson Co.

East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind—ranging over classic literature, ancient and modern, both Western and non-Western, from the dilemmas of modernity in Yeats, Eliot, Milosz, Bellow, Dostoevsky, to Lu Xun, Tamura Ryuichi, Kenzaburo Oe, Naguib Mahfouz, R. K. Narayan, among others, from mimesis and deconstruction to the United Nations, with extensive essays on Chinese, Japanese, and South-Asian literature. Glaysher invokes a global vision beyond the prevailing conceptions of life and literature that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture.
The New York Review of Books

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The Bower of Nil: A Narrative Poem

Peter Marsh, an academic philosopher, weighs modern life in a conversation with his friend, David Emerson, a businessman. Brought together after long separation by the brutal murder of Mary, Peter’s wife, a time of devastating loss and crisis, their friendship inspires a dark night of the soul, during which Peter’s meditations range over several hundred years of philosophy, politics, religion, social change, the dilemmas of existence, evoking a vision of the complexities of the 21st Century, the United Nations, and global governance. (Excerpt from Section I of III, online.)

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"This is a doorway into the future . . . the subtleties and complexities of the aforementioned cultures inform his subject matter and his political interests circumscribe the work. The Bower of Nil is an Orwell meets Nietzsche meets C.S. Lewis mélange of despair, madness, and hope. Not lyrical, not tidy and not information-byte-sized, your fingers come away heavy with paint—rather than print— after reading this. Colored richly and satisfyingly with symbols (e.g., the name Peter, the lily, the lantern) that speak directly to the psyche—the way that artwork spoke to the illiterate in the Middle Ages...." Poems Niederngasse More reviews...

Into the Ruins: Poems

Into the Ruins confronts much of the human experience left out of the balance by postmodern poetry, often compared to the Alexandrians and the Neoterics, when writers similarly concentrated on the minor themes of personal life, while ignoring the challenging experience of the public realm. Suffused with a tragic global vision, Into the Ruins has its gaze fixed firmly on the 21st Century.

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"At high points, his poetry captures the feelings of contingency and horror felt by many but expressed well by few.... Glaysher fits well within the literary tradition, as he shows with his allusions to or mentions of, among others, Augustine, Dante, Yeats, Dostoyevsky, and Hayden; however, his voice is distinct. Among contemporary poets, few have a vision as darkly haunting.... Few also have the knowledge and the ability to handle contemporary issues with such presence of language. Out of the mass of recent poetry books, here is one you should read." Jack Magazine More reviews....

Letters from the American Desert: Signposts of a Journey, A Vision Just Published: April 15, 2008

Glaysher reflects on the cultural, political, and religious history of Western and non-Western civilizations, pondering the dilemmas of postmodernity, in a compelling struggle for spiritual knowledge and truth. Fully cognizant of the relativism and nihilism of modern life, Glaysher finds a deeper meaning and purpose for the individual and the world community in the writings and global vision of Baha’u’llah, as expressed in the Reform Bahai Faith. Confronting the antinomies of the soul, grounded in the dialectic, Glaysher charts a path beyond the postmodern desert.