Epic Poetry Reading at Crazy Wisdom Bookstore.
Ann Arbor, Michigan. May 13, 2017. 7:00 PM.
Reading from The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, a shaman-like tale or chant for our time, speaking to the entire planet.
Since 2014, I’ve read at Crazy Wisdom Bookstore four times, for the poetry and the story-telling groups and a shaman book group; and since my epic is over 9,000 lines, I thought I’d invite people here tonight for a little longer taste of it than merely 5 or 10 minutes, for more of a sense of the story as a shaman Journey drawing from and evoking all of the great spiritual and wisdom traditions and regional civilizations.
I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to such writers and thinkers as the historian Arnold Toynbee, Carl Jung, Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, and many others of open and universal sensibility. Campbell, especially, wrote on shamanism and myth and their power to heal the tribe through a visionary experience and tale. Campbell also wrote repeatedly about the overview Image of Earthrise, rising above the horizon of the moon, as the great new mythic Image and Symbol for our time.
“Like a story around a campfire.” —From the Audience
