Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

(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 ...

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 myst...

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 Tolt...

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...

edited by Ellen Dooling Draper and Jenny Koralek (Published for the Paul Brunton Philosophic Society by Larson Publications, 1999, www.larsonpublications.com) Everyone knows Disney’s Mary Poppins, but what of Mary’s creator, P. L. Travers? Due to the at-times questionable magic of Walt Disney and company, authors are often separated from their works. Ask most people who authored The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Tarzan and you might just get a blank-faced stare. In the case of P. L. Travers, this wonderful collection of twenty essays (three by Travers herself) not only reconnects the author with her most famous work, but illuminates the vibrant thoughts, expressive writing, and lifetime of exploration into myths, fairy tales, and folklore that were the true passions of this gifted writer. A Lively Oracle is divided into six parts (Biographical Notes; Mary Poppins; The Other Books; Themes; Conversations, Lectures, Interviews; and Three Articles by P.L. Travers) book-ended by an Introductio...

(2009, Baltimore: Publish America, www.publishamerica.com) by Joey Madia The subtitle of Michaela Sefler’s most recent collection (she is the author of almost a dozen books of poems) is “Metaphysical Poetry,” a genre which has long held interest for me. The poems read as though they were channeled by the author in a somewhat altered state—certainly a place of openness and peace—derived either through meditation or deep breathing, allowing the words to flow like a calm, tranquil river. There are no politically or socially jarring works here. Everything is Prayer. They have titles such as “Yellow Jasper,” “The Magician,” and “Equinox.” The poems are all set center-spaced, marking a landscape wherein the author takes us on numerous journeys as we follow several nameless questers on their paths of enlightenment. Referred to only as “he” and “she” or “him” and “her,” these individuals operate on the level of the warrior seeking sartori, bushido, or the knighthood. The tales of the Grail Qu...

(Meritage Press, 2006, www.meritagepress.com) by Joey Madia In the past six months I have reviewed several works by Eileen Tabios and authors associated with Meritage Press that employ the Tabios-invented poetic technique of hay(na)ku. Simply put, the form is tercets consisting of one-, two-, and three-word lines. One can also reverse the order. I say “simply put” because authors are taking this form and working with it in myriad ways to make it their own. Ernest Priego’s Not Even Dogs was, at the time of its printing, the first single-author book of hay(na)ku (or, in Spanish, jáinakú). The Foreword by Mark Young (co-editor of the first hay(na)ku anthology) and the Afterword by Eileen Tabios elucidate the history and methodology behind the hay(na)ku form, so I will refrain from saying any more about it here. Not Even Dogs is divided into three subject-matter sections: Mornings, Territories, and Cities. It is neatly laid out, with design and typesetting by Michelle M. Bautista and compe...

(Beneath the Underground, 2005, $45.00) Improvisations is a scary big book. At 700 pages it is far afield from your typically slim volume of poetry. Frazer uses the length and breadth of this master-work to cover an immense amount of typographical and etymological ground, and he has the freedom to repeat a variety of themes for emphasis and effect. At times the passages are so slightly, subtly revised as to be almost unnoticed. But the structure here is akin to Pollock’s drip paintings or the works of East Coast wordsmith Marc Sonnenfeld—Frazer “denies the accident” and one gets the sense that moving one word, one symbol, one line would collapse the entire structure. It took me nine and a half months to read Improvisations, taking it in as I did in manageable, well-considered doses, like the potent intoxicant that it is. Not since I read Bob Dylan’s Tarantula many years ago have I felt so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of words. I hold the distinction of being the first person to buy ...

Review of Highest Hurdle Press’s Letterhead Vol. 2 (Edited by Bradley Lastname, Christopher Robin, Brian McMahon, Robert Pomerhn, and Eric Johnt, Highest Hurdle Press, 2008) {Disclaimer: Two of my poems appear in this collection. They are not mentioned in this review.} In 2008 I had the distinct pleasure of reviewing Letterhead Volume #1. At the time I thought it quite the impressive undertaking, bringing together so many different types of poets from so many areas of the United States. Readers of that review (and that volume) will be pleased to know that Vol. 2 builds upon both the scope and quality of its predecessor, retaining all of its best qualities while striking new ground in content and form and offering what co-editor Bradley Lastname recently explained to me is a “…darker selection of work, because the times we live in are darker.” Amen. Embroiled as we are in a time of ongoing wars and global economic and environmental crises (the key subjects explored), the role of the poe...

(Published for the Paul Brunton Philosophic Society by Larson Publications, 1995, www.larsonpublications.com) In the promotional material for this poetic and compelling book, Mary Lee Wile’s biography says that she “wrote this book as a way to fathom her own feelings of grief and rage at the loss of children.” The book’s dedication is to “The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,” whose children, according to Wikipedia “‘disappeared’ during the [Argentinian] Dirty War, the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.” It has been said that outliving one’s child is life’s most profound injustice, and the depth of emotion and meaning in the 144 pages of Ancient Rage are a testament to the deep river of sorrow that the parent of a dead child has to plumb the depths of. Creating a successful narrative about New Testament matters is no easy task, as evidenced by the poor outcome of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt, and Wile overcomes potential obstacles by letting the story tell itself vir...

(2008, Fisher King Press, www.fisherkingpress.com) By Joey Madia Timekeeper is a modern parable, a journey of “re-imagined events” processed through the author’s memory onto the page. Part Kerouac’s On the Road, part Paul Coelho’s The Alchemist, and all soul and spirit, John Atkinson shares with us the story of an Everyman hero who searches for the one thing most precious to a man— His name. Johnnyboy, who is unable to read, is 14 when the book opens. After another beating at the hands of the abusive father he calls Bugdaddy (who has already popped his eardrum with a slap and beaten him with a fanbelt), he takes to the road, heading physically and metaphorically westward from Virginia, in search of enlightenment. Being “of the earth” in both his illiteracy and his part–Native American blood, Johnnyboy is full of metaphorical expressions. Speaking about Bugdaddy, he says to God (through Moses): “That man needs to be shot with sheep sh*t and sent to hell for stinking.” It should be noted...

(InkerMen Press, 2008) Land’s End, the follow-up anthology to 2007’s Green and Unpleasant Land, is a fairly dark and sinister collection of tales covering a broad range of themes within the confines of that narrow strip of land betwixt the sea and the larger world. Consisting of twelve stories and a Preface (“Didn’t we have a Lovely Time?”), Land’s End covers, for example, mythology, seaside entertainments, sea creatures, and plenty of ghosts. Lucy Ann Wade starts off the stories with her take on the Calypso and Odysseus episode from The Odyssey (“Calypso”), doing so with great success as she explores the always treacherous nexus of naiveté and sexual lust. The “do as I say, not as I do” two-facedness of Calypso’s fellow Naiads made them read like a pack of modern high-school girls and not the far-off subjects of what is often (wrongly) seen as an irrelevant and antiquated tale. Over the past several years of reviewing InkerMen titles, I have made no secret of my fondness for the tales...

(Moongazy Publishing, 2006, www.stonewylde.com) Last year I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing Magus of Stonewylde, Book One of the Stonewylde series. The seemingly idyllic pagan community that serves as the stage for this engaging series is populated with heroes and heroines, shamans and witches, Villagers and Hallfolk, all partaking in the eight festivals that mark the cycles of the year in pagan practice. At the center of Stonewylde is the all-powerful and charming Magus, against whom is set the series’ hero—a teenager named Yul, who shares in a star-crossed love with the very complicated and unique Sylvie, whose arrival and adjustment to Stonewylde were central to Magus. Moondance of Stonewylde succeeds in the many ways I mentioned in my review of Magus, and builds on that success in several new aspects. Berry goes into great detail about the daily and seasonal workings of the community in the sequel, covering everything from the harvesting of apples and the making of cider ...

“Building Words in Time”: A Review of Ed Baker/Cid Corman’s “Restoration Letters (1972–1978)” (tel-let, Charleston, IL, 2003) and Ed Baker’s “Restoration Poems (1972-2007)" (Country Valley Press, 2008, countryvalley@mac.com) In the age of e-mail, at a time when the Post Office is deep in the red and thinking of scaling back delivery to five days a week, it was a welcome pleasure to receive “Restoration Letters” as a companion to “Restoration Poems” from poet and artist Ed Baker. Ed’s minimalist, stream-of-consciousness poetry had caught my attention several months before, as did his goddess drawings, and I was eager to read the collection of poems he had written while restoring the John Penn house outside Hanover, PA during the years 1972–1975. “Restoration Letters” represents five and a half years of correspondence between Baker and the poet, editor, and translator Cid Corman, who was living at the time in Kyoto running a struggling coffee shop with his wife Shizumi, a former tel...

It’s always easy to like a book with which you instantly agree. We embrace the familiar, the similar, the types of things made of the same prima materia with which we’ve built our beliefs. But so much the better when an idea, a thesis, a text that we at first reject wins us over through a mix of solid research, real-life examples, and strong writing. Such is the case with my experience of Guilt with a Twist. In the Overview, Dr. Staples states: “We have to sin and incur guilt, if we are to grow and reach our full potential” (xv). Being a “lapsed” Catholic who had often experienced guilt as a weapon and thought the concept of “Original Sin” or having to confess your sins to an intermediary was nothing but power-clenching propaganda on the part of the Church, I found myself inching toward dismissing the book entirely, a feeling that persisted as I continued through the first section. The idea here is that there is “Good Guilt,” as demonstrated by such historical luminaries as Socrates, R...

Chatelaine (chain)—A set of short chains on a belt worn by women and men for carrying keys, thimble and/or sewing kit, etc. (from Wikipedia) “Kapwa”—a Filipino cultural concept of interconnectedness whereby other people are not “others” but part of what one is. (from the opening page; emphasis in original) How does one get to truly know the artist? Especially when the one doing the searching is the artist her- or himself? Dostoyevsky and Freud put forth the notion that it is impossible for an autobiography to reveal the Truth because of our penchant for self-delusion and both positive and negative exaggeration. Aldous Huxley seemed to agree, saying: “there is never a one-to-one correspondence between an author’s work and his character.” If poetry, like all writing, is a form of autobiography, then the path to the Truth is lined with thorns and nails and broken glass, at the end of which are myriad locks. The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys is a collection of reviews of many of Eileen Tabios’ b...

Winner of the The Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry prize, for which Filipino poets from around the world are eligible, Jean Vengua’s Prau is a fascinating journey in the often stormy seas of nontraditional poetry. It takes as its overarching theme images of boats and boating, bracketing its interior selection of poems with a beginning quote by Herman Melville and an ending quote from The Dhammapada. The quotes served, for me, a navigational purpose, functioning as the start and end points on a map or as the buoys that mark a channel or inlet, calling to mind the mnemonic device of “Red, Right, Return” that I learned as a teenager living near the ocean and learning to sail. Such anchors, if you will, are an essential part of any nontraditional writing, as they clue the reader to the fact that the author is not working randomly, or haphazardly, just putting words, phrases, and constructs on the page, but that the collection holds in important, vital ways. In reading Prau, I often tho...

Eileen Tabios is proof that one need not be locked into either a right- or left-brained set of experiences over the course of one’s life. With an MBA from NYU and an undergraduate degree in political science, she had a successful career in finance before shifting her attention to poetry. Her list of publications and awards is impressive (including the Philippines’ Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry). She is an editor as well as a writer, and since 2001 has been integrating mixed-media and performance aspects into her work. She is also the founder of Meritage Press. Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole is a subtle cinematography of words. It is a meditative and gentle read, drawing on the deeply experiential and ultra-personal, framed by a referential triumvirate—poetry, painting, and place. This book of what might be termed “prose poems” is composed of three sections: My Greece, Returning the Borrowed Tongue, and Triptych for Anne Truitt. The collection opens with four...