The Bower of Nil bookcover

The Bower of Nil

A Narrative Poem
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Description

2024 revised edition. Structured around classical Greek choral movements, the first section ponders themes from Japanese Buddhism, while the second and third survey Western philosophy from Aristotle and Plato through Descartes, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, and others, in a powerfully dramatic grappling with philosophy, East and West.​​

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.

"This is a doorway into the future. Colored richly and satisfyingly with symbols that speak directly to the psyche-the way that artwork spoke to the illiterate in the Middle Ages." -Poems Niederngasse

"Glaysher pays his readers the compliment of assuming that they will have at least a basic familiarity with the major world classics and philosophies of both East and West." -Manifold 44

Product Details

PublisherEarthrise Press
Publish DateMay 15, 2009
Pages72
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9780967042145
Dimensions8.5 X 5.5 X 0.2 inches | 0.2 pounds
BISAC Categories: Poetry, Poetry, Poetry

About the Author

Frederick Glaysher is an epic poet, rhapsode, poet-critic, and the author or editor of ten books. Glaysher studied at the University of Michigan with the American poet Robert Hayden and edited his collected prose and poetry. He holds two degrees from the University of Michigan, including a Master's in English, and is the Literary Executor of the Hayden Estate. He lived for more than fifteen years outside Michigan-in Japan, where he taught at Gunma University in Maebashi; in Arizona, on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation, site of one of the largest internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII; in Illinois, on the central farmlands and on the Mississippi; ultimately returning to his suburban hometown of Rochester.A Fulbright-Hays scholar to China in 1994, he studied at Beijing University, the Buddhist Mogao Caves on the old Silk Road, and elsewhere in China, including Hong Kong and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. While a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar in 1995 on India, he further explored the conflicts between the traditional regional civilizations of Islamic and Hindu cultures and modernity. An accredited Presenter at The Parliament of the World's Religions in 2021.

Reviews

"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

"Explores the liberating potential of loss and acceptance as agents for empowerment." -The Carolina Quarterly

"Mr. Glaysher writes with a genuine passion, with an obvious thrill at the play of ideas, and with an often compelling sense of purpose. Very worthwhile reading and the middle section is just outstanding." -BrothersJudd

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