Poetry, Metaphysics and Mythopoesis
Diamond Cutters
Coming soon
What Poets Used to Know: Poetics, Mythopoesis, Metaphysics
What Poets Used to Know: Poetics, Mythopoesis, Metaphysics This book contains virtually everything I’ve written on poetics and poetic tradition that is not to be found in and Shadow of the Rose or The Wars of Love and Other Poems or Day and Night on the Sufi Path or Hammering Hot Iron or Folk…
Read more What Poets Used to Know: Poetics, Mythopoesis, Metaphysics
Doorkeeper of the Heart
Doorkeeper of the Heart Versions of Rabi’a Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, a major saint of Islam and one of the central figures of Sufi tradition, was born around 717 AD in Basra in what is now Iraq. Little is known of her actual life: she was born into a poor family and both her parents died…
Who is the Earth
Who is the Earth How to See God in the Natural World Ever since the advent of “earth-based spiritualities” in our time, the call to realize the Divine Immanence, to see God in the forms of the natural world and the particular events of our lives, has become paramount. And yet, without a corresponding…
Hammering Hot Iron
Hammering Hot Iron A Spiritual Critique of Bly’s Iron John In 1990 American poet Robert Bly published a book entitled Iron John: A Book about Men, which was a major factor in the development of what was (or is?) called “the Men’s Movement”. Distressed at the de-masculinization of men in an era of Feminism…
The Wars of Love
The Wars of Love and Other Poems When poet Jack Gilbert, some time in the 1970’s in San Francisco, asked his poetry class, “Who here aspires to write a masterpiece?”, not one hand was raised. I, on the other hand, wanted to do just that; after reading Blake’s Prophetic Books for the first time,…
Shadow of the Rose
Shadow of the Rose The Esoterism of the Romantic Tradition by Charles Upton and Jennifer Doane Upton Charles Upton: Human love has fallen on hard times; it has been “officially discredited.” Even liberal humanitarianism is not what it used to be; how then can romantic love, which in its origins is essentially aristocratic (in…
Folk Metaphysics
Folk Metaphysics Mystical Meanings in Traditional Folk Songs and Spirituals In the last century, authors and psychologists like Robert Graves, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell reminded us that folklore is often full of deep symbolic truths, truths that the “folk” themselves are usually unaware of. And they also taught us—just as Plato did, 2400…
Charles Upton 