Tag Archives: Frederick Glaysher

Poetry Reading, Epic Poetry Reading at Hannan Cafe

Poets & Pies Series, Hannan Cafe, November 30, 2015

Poets & Pies Series,
Hannan Cafe,
November 30, 2015

Poetry Reading, Epic Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher.

Reading from Into the Ruins: Poems and The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.
November 30, 2015. 21 minutes. Funded by Poets & Writers, Inc. Hosted by M. L. Liebler.

Poets & Pies Series: Special Holiday Edition. Hannan Cafe.
Off campus at Wayne State University, 4750 Woodward Ave, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

“It’s very contemporary, in some ways, and very much old school… This is really some cool stuff, I have to say, and I’m not just saying that, just to say it. It really is, and when you hear some of his epic poetry and poetry, hopefully you’ll agree and want to grab a copy of The Parliament of Poets. If you’ve done any study of classic epic poetry, this fits the bill. And don’t let that turn you away. It’s really good stuff.”

—M. L. Liebler, Poet and Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.

Frederick Glaysher

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The Humanities in Crisis

Plato

Plato

The Humanities in Crisis

In higher education the political and partisan battles, so hardened, are of less concern to me than the ideological ones, which run deeper, to my mind. Genuine openness to debate is what often gets crushed out of existence in my experience of English departments.

The “culture wars,” as so often construed on “both sides,” amount to too narrow a slice of human experience, in my view, which is much of the problem. The culture of the humanities is deadlocked in narrow terms and thinking. I think too that the humanities today have become based on a far too limited conception of the humanities, in our extremely fragmented society, accepting a meta-narrative, an ideology, that actually works against the humanities, while closing off to other views of life that might help reinvigorate them and help reach people more broadly with the serious reflection that the liberal arts at their best are capable of offering.

Human experience is much deeper and profound than what the humanities have come to allow in our time, creating a disharmony that has deeply damaged itself and contemporary culture. One often hears the underlying fear implicit in the humanities as a backward movement to fundamentalism, Christian or otherwise, as though there were no other possibilities. Academic secular formalism and nihilism, however, are just fine, and almost invariably the prescribed ideology.

The ideological issues at stake on *both sides* are flawed, neither allowing a full debate, since each is stuck in categories of thought grounded in exclusivism. Following Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, I believe the extreme polarization of our time is what’s the most telling, though disturbing, fact, and is the clearest evidence of decadence, exactly what the humanities today so rarely considers, conceiving and caricaturing it again only in terms redolent of right-wing Christian fundamentalism.

My argument isn’t against the university or what is salutary from the Enlightenment, but to point out the flaws on all sides and the way we can make relatively modest adjustments in our thinking and culture that would help resolve our endemic crises. Unfortunately, in my experience, the humanities remain closed off to any real debate, virtually guaranteeing their continuing decline.

I feel saddened by what’s happened to the humanities. It’s partly why for the past forty years I’ve continued to study and write my poetry and essays… struggling for, I’d like to think, a whole new way of looking at modern experience and our many problems. The difficulty that I’ve had is finding capable readers willing to consider a serious literary and cultural vision other than what’s become dominant. Seeking unity in a time of extreme fragmentation, I constantly run up against the experience of one syllable closing minds on all sides. Eventually, it drove me to the moon…

Frederick Glaysher

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Earthrise Press Free Shipping in the USA, UK, AU

Earthrise Press The Globe

Earthrise Press
The Globe

Earthrise Press Free Shipping in the USA, UK, AU

Now free shipping in the USA, UK, and Australia, processed within 24 hours. That amounts to more than 911 million potential readers of English of the world’s approximately 1.8+ billion speakers of English. Printers also in Milton Keynes, UK, and Scoresby, Australia. In Europe and the UK, the VAT is added at checkout. DRM-free eBooks, hardcover, and softcover.

I think I’ve reached a new threshold with my more than a decade and a half of struggling with the Post-Gutenberg Revolution in what is now a major technical improvement for EarthrisePress.Net — I’ve long thought that there must be a way in the Digital Age for artists and writers to make a living from their art in some way by going around all the traditional middle men and the newer mega-portals of online sellers that are attempting to create their own monopolies. In fact, I wrote a more than twenty-page essay, “The Post-Gutenberg Revolution: A Manifesto,” to this effect, in my book The Myth of the Enlightenment, which expands on all of what I think is involved in this major shift in civilization. Previously, I had to sell hardcover and softcover books through one credit card payment system and ebooks through another, which was cumbersome and discouraging for people buying more than one book. But Gumroad, a very creative venture in San Francisco, has recently put the two features together which also allows me to plug into the major worldwide printing network of Ingram Book Company’s Lightning Source for the fulfillment and printing of hardcover and softcover books. I’m rather astonished that I can now do this… all from one website… whether someone orders an ebook, a hardcover, or a softcover on EarthrisePress.Net – Gumroad’s SSL servers handle the financial transaction, adds the correct VAT for the UK, Euro Zone, and Australia. If it is a printed book, Gumroad processes the order, forwarding the shipping address to Earthrise Press and then I or my staff can order and have the book printed and shipped in any of the already mentioned regions with *free shipping* since the numbers work for everyone concerned with this configuration. Many people have become accustomed to buying music and books from the mega-portals, but why? I would say there was no real alternative. Now there is, precisely what some musicians have done with their own websites, and J. K. Rowling with at least her ebook website. The exact same printed or digital book goes out into the hands of the reader, in several possible formats, mobi/Kindle, ePub, PDF, Android / iOS, etc., hardcover, softcover, whatever. Given all the animosity around the world against some of the major venues, I believe this might very well be a way of providing an alternative for artists and writers, and, not to forget, readers, who don’t want to support a monopoly… I have long believed what’s needed is the *example* of a writer who figures all this out and puts it together in the actual world on a *global* level, setting the *example* of what is indeed now possible… by actually doing it. I wrote my epic poem with a global audience in mind, and now I believe it is possible to sell it to the entire world through the revolutionary developments of the Post-Gutenberg Age.

I’m encouraged that, as someone who has spent most of his adult life sitting in rooms alone reading books, my epic has found its way to as many readers as it has around the world… with more than 36 blurb/reviews since late November 2012. I know it often took in the past a long time for a book that presented a truly new way of looking at life to *reach humanity* and realize I shouldn’t entirely expect anything else, all the more given that I’m addressing not merely Western Civilization but all of the major regional civilizations around the planet. We human beings are inured to our nationalistic isolation. The Unity of humanity? What could be more absurd!!

Frederick Glaysher

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Letter to Bill Moyers

Bill_MoyersOctober 19, 2015

Bill Moyers
billmoyers.com

Dear Mr. Moyers,

Decades ago your outstanding programs with Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith were important influences on me, and on my epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, which was published in late November 2012, after thirty years in the making, and which takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site. For many years I mulled over Campbell’s insight that the great image of Earthrise over the lunar landscape heralded a new spiritual awareness. In my epic I evoke a new global, universal vision of life on this planet.

In a world of Quantum Physics, Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. 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 wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.

One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures. Another is the nature of science and religion, including Quantum Physics, as well as the “two cultures,” science and the humanities.

It would be an honor for you to choose to Journey to the Moon… and judge my epic worthy of “reaching humanity,” if not on your program, now ended, through perhaps your good opinion. I’d be happy to send you a hardcover copy.

Sincerely yours,

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com
fglaysher  AT gmail
5224 Aintree Road
Rochester, Michigan 48306
Phone: 248-652-4982

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