“A Little Girl Alongside a Road” is a poem about an experience that I had in China in 1994 (correct date), near Dunhuang, Gansu, relatively close to Xinziang, where perhaps as many as 1.8 million Muslim Uighurs have now been thrown into concentration camps by China and subjected to horrifying abuse and slave labor. We human beings on this planet must honor and protect their dignity and humanity.
Special thanks to ML Lieblier, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, for hosting and inviting me to participate in his recent poetry reading benefit on Zoom for Book Beat bookshop on Sunday, December 6, 2020. Book Beat, Oak Park, Michigan, has a couple of my books available The Parliament of Poets and The Myth of the Enlightenment.
I’ll first outline in brief the experiment of the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston, from 1949 to about 1960, and sketch a little how it looks now given the life of our country and culture during the intervening fifty-five years, and then suggest the value the experiment might still hold for today. In 1964, Beacon Press and Meeting House Press published Kenneth L. Patton’s book A Religion for One World: Art and Symbols for a Universal Religion. Patton presents what he calls the history of the experiment of the Universalist Charles Street Meeting House, at the foot of Beacon Hill in Boston…
Theosophical Society of Detroit – Friday, December 7, 2018. 7:00 – 9:00 pm. Q&A. 27745 Woodward Avenue, Berkley, MI 48072.
Frederick Glaysher
Frederick Glaysher spoke about the long journey of modernity during the last 130 to 150 years in search of a universal conception of spirituality. Glaysher discusses the book The World’s Parliament of Religions, 1893, and key influential speakers and groups represented at The Parliament in Chicago, including Vivekananda, Brahmo Samaj, the Unitarian Church, and the Theosophical Society, highlighting and surveying Madame Blavatsky’s emphasis on Universal Brotherhood and the study of comparative religion. Further currents include Dara Shikoh, Rammohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Abdul-Baha, Rumi, Kabir, poets and mystics, Emerson. Among other seeking souls touched on, Evelyn Underhill, Arnold Toynbee, Micea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, and Huston Smith.
Somehow I missed this review online in August, 2016, just stumbling on it now. A pleasure to find… a thoughtful engagement.
“I will definitely be checking out more of his work in the future (Parliament of Poets looks good). This book deals with many of the horrors and terrors of the long 20th century, and in many ways chastises the poets of this period for not finding an effective way to confront that horror.”
“…this book is quite good. It is well laid out, and does what so few collection of poems do– that is build an argument or overall claim. There are short pieces that deal with the visceral horrors of conflict, relying on powerful imagery, and then longer drawn out philosophical pieces that culminate what Glaysher has been saying.”
“The result is a collection that makes shorter, powerful jabs, followed by a prolonged punch. The reader is therefore left with the power of the poetry as the poems build on each other in rapid succession. Well written, thought out, and containing a clear purpose, I highly recommend Into the Ruins and look forward to reading Glaysher’s other works.” —Wes Bishop, Goodreads
For a selection of poems from Into the Ruins, see the first half of my poetry reading at Hannan Cafe, November 3, 2015.
At the Birmingham Unitarian Church, March 31, 2014, I read another poem from Into the Ruins, “The Crowned Maitreya,” the Buddha of the Future, Japan’s national treasure, housed in Kyoto at Koryu-ji Temple.
As a universal interfaith story, The Parliament of Poets tells the tale of a journey toward cosmos, Christian and spiritual unity, “Spiritual, Not Religious.” Continue reading →
As a universal interfaith story, The Parliament of Poets tells the tale of a journey toward cosmos, Christian and spiritual unity. “Spiritual, Not Religious.” Continue reading →
Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modern life. The Parliament of Poets sends the main character, the Poet of the Moon, on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and […]
A series of two different performances and six lectures, reviving the storytelling role of the ancient Greek rhapsode, and evoking a new global, universal vision of life. Continue reading →
