The Hidden Eyes of Things.

Very pleased to announce the publication of The Hidden Eyes of Things, a new book-length poem out from the Cultural Society. You can order the book directly from the Cultural Society here; or you can order it from SPD.

The Hidden Eyes of Things completes the trilogy on poetry and consciousness begun in Phosphorescence of Thought (about the evolution of consciousness), and continued in Earth Is Best (about altered states of consciousness). The Hidden Eyes of Things explores the unconscious through the discipline of astrology.

I decided not to include in the book itself the list of all the books I consulted and used but include it here for anyone who might be interested.

THE HIDDEN EYES OF THINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

These are the books I consulted, borrowed and quoted from, and ruminated on over the long course of the composition of this poem.

Abu’l-Rayhan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology, Astrology Classics 2006.

Robert Hinckley Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning. Dover 1963.

Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology, Routledge 1994.

Austin Coppack and Daniel A. Schulke, The Celestial Art: Essays on Astrological Magic, Three Hands Press 2018.

Brian Cox, Wonders of the Solar System, Collins 2011.

Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, Dover 1960.

Dionysius (Pseudo-Dionysius), The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, Classics of Western Spirituality 1987.

Marsilio Ficino, The Book of Life, trans. Charles Boer, Spring Publications 1980.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, volumes I-III, trans. members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London, Gingko Press 1985.

Fred Gettings, The Arkana Dictionary of Astrology, Arkana 1985.

Fred Gettings, The Book of the Zodiac, Triune 1972.

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Penguin Classics 1960.

Robert Hand, Horoscope Symbols, Whitford Press, 1981.

James Hillman, A Terrible Love of War, Penguin 2004.

Homeric Hymns Homeric Apocrypha Lives of Homer, ed. and trans. Martin L. West, Loeb 2003.

Brian Innes, Horoscopes: How to Draw and Interpret Them, Arco 1978.

Carl Kerényi, Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence, trans. Ralph Manheim, Bollingen Series LXV.I 1963.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, trans. W.H.D.Rouse, Loeb 1992.

Manilius, Astronomica, trans. G.P. Goold, Loeb 1997.

Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephan MacKenna, Pantheon 1969.

David A. Rothery, The Planets: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 2010.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, Viking 2006.

Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, Faber and Faber 1958.

Recent and upcoming readings, pandemic edition.

In this time of pandemic, I’ve done some readings, all on Zoom or YouTube. This seems to be the poetic way of the present, not such a bad thing, in fact. I’ve enjoyed “attending” readings from poets all around the country and world in the past four months, a welcome interference with the menace and challenge of the Plague.

Here I am reading “Totality,” the solar section of The Hidden Eyes of Things, a forthcoming epic poem about the unconscious activated through the discipline of astrology. Here I’m reading with Patrick Morrissey, whose book Light Box, John Tipton and I will be publishing with Verge Books in October 2021. My contribution begins at the thirteen-minute mark.

Here I am offering a reflection on the role of Mary in the Church, something posted on the website of my parish, Ascension Church. It’s also a reflection on Henry Adams’s Mont Saint Michel and Chartres.

And here I am as part of a large group reading for the new Ecopoetics anthology, Poetics for the More-than-Human World, that appeared on the Dispatches website. My contribution to this reading begins at the ten-minute mark. I also participate in the discussion after the readings proper conclude.

The Ecopoetics anthology includes a review of Earth Is Best, written by the indefatigable Mark Scroggins. Its first sentence gives me thrills and chills.

On September 10, 2020, I will be reading on Zoom for Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, one of the few truly essential cultural institutions to poetry. I will be reading with Roberto Harrison, in conjunction with his virtual gallery show at Woodland Pattern, “Tropical Lung: Tec Alliance,” which is Immense. Magnificent. Terrifying.

Mabila Horizons / earth as interior solitudes, by Roberto Harrison.

Roberto is a Great Companion; I’m thrilled to be reading with him.

Finally, another section from The Hidden Eyes of Things, “The Strokes of the Moon,” was recently published on Blazing Stadium, the already dynamic and thrilling electronic journal edited by Tamas Panitz, Whit Griffin, and Lila Dunlap.

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re well, taking care of yourself, and taking care of others.

Earth Is Best.

My new book, Earth Is Best, will shortly be published by the Cultural Society. It’s a book of odes about mushrooms, mushroom foraging, altered states of consciousness, modern crises, and antique realities. It is a sequel to Phosphorescence of Thought. (In turn, it will one day be followed by its own sequel, The Hidden Eyes of Things, a planetary epic that approaches the unconscious through the discipline of astrology.) Earth Is Best takes its title from the opening three words of Pindar’s magnificent first Olympian Ode, elementally adjusted. The book, which features a gorgeous illustration of amanita muscaria by Todd Buck (below), was designed by Crisis.

Illustration by Todd Buck.

I will be launching Earth Is Best at a reading/performance at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6 p.m. I will be joined in the performance by Mark Booth, who will accompany the reading with improvised and found music.

The book will be available at the reading and, before too long, at the Cultural Society’s website. For the curious, here is a more detailed description of the book.

In a time of ecological crisis, Peter O’Leary finds in mushrooms “an elaborate pattern,” a circulation of energy, a strange Kingdom with the power to alter consciousness. From the opening line “Earth is best,” each proposition takes root in the terroir of soils, in the woods and meadows of the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. On each foray, we find hidden systems bearing fruit, “crowning from the duff of white pines / and birch trees,” extending upward from “loam’s rich undying gloom.” Equally, these poems bloom from a rich mulch of linguistic inheritance, a compost of ancient texts and esoteric knowledge, searching out old words of exquisite exactitude and resonance. As readers, our attention quickens as we join the hunt, discovering elemental pleasures on every page, sometimes with the prickling onset of psychedelic consciousness. And like fungi, these poems work to break down false oppositions, returning us to a reciprocity between death and life, panic and joy, anxiety and euphoria, tocsin and cure.

Nature and Myth, Nature and Regeneration.

Back in February, I had a poem published in the "Nature and Myth" pamphlet in Corbel Stone Press's marvelous Contemporary Poetry Series, a little ditty about myrrh. And then in June, I had another poem, this time a portion of an Amanita Ode called "Toadstool," published in the "Nature and Regeneration" number. Corbel Stone, edited by Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton, publishes Reliquiae, along with Hambone, my present favorite poetry journal. Reliquiae is truly wonderful - dedicated by credo to "landscape, ecology, folklore, esoteric philosophy and animism" - and the pamphlets in the Contemporary Poetry Series are replete with sublime work.

New poems at the Cultural Society.

Four new poems of mine have been posted at the Cultural Society, two amanita odes from Earth Is Best, and two new lyrics, one about Nemesis, the other about Milton.

Live it up!

Readings: Grand Cross Full Moon

On January 12, 2017, there's a Grand Cross Full Moon happening, with the Moon and Sun in opposition (and with Pluto very close) and Jupiter and Uranus in opposition. Lux Hominem court astrologer Victoria Martin calls this formation and the days surrounding it "highlights" of 2017. There will be a lot of energy available; what better way to expand its properties than to gaze through the archetypal telescope of a poetry reading?

On January 10, 2017, at 6 p.m., at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, one of the great bastions of Western civilization, I will be reading with Steven Toussaint, a label mate at the Cultural Society, currently of Auckland, New Zealand, but native of Chicago's South Side.

Anticipate mystic mastery of time and space.

On Saturday, February 25, 2017, at the University of Louisville, at "The Louisville Conference," along with Joseph Donahue and Mark Scroggins, I will be presenting a paper on the work of the great Norman Finkelstein. My talk is tentatively called, "Thaumaturgical Energies and Ceremonies of Crisis: Apocalyptic Transmission in Norman Finkelstein's 'From the Files of the Immanent Foundation.'"

Anticipate unreconstructed bad-assery, especially from Donahue and Scroggins. Who Do Not Mess Around.

And on Monday, March 13, 2017 at Xavier University, I will be reading with Brenda Iijima. I don't have any details for this one yet, but they should arrive shortly.

Reliquiae and the Sampo.

Pleased to report that I have new work in the fourth issue of Reliquiae, the very fine journal edited by Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton, and published by Corbel Stone Press. My poem, "Thirty-Third Amanita Ode: Parmenides/Clouds," is a meditation on Gerard Manley Hopkins's descriptions of clouds in light of his invented term of uplift, instress. For anyone who might have been keeping track, this poem concludes the series of Amanita odes that comprise Earth Is Best, my manuscript of ethno-mycological effervescence. Scroll down to find my "Mycopoetics," published last year in Hambone.

Also, a review of The Sampo in Publishers Weekly. Nice!

The Reception.

The Reception, by Michael O'Leary, has just been published by The Cultural Society.

Michael O'Leary with rainbow.

New poem.

My cover version of Baudelaire's "Le Reniement de Saint Pierre." At the Marsh Hawk Review, in an issue edited by Norman Finkelstein.

Its companion is another cover version, along with an alternate take, of Baudelaire's "Alchemie de la Doleur," published by Gillian Parrish in her spacecraftprojects.

Among the beauties of Baudelaire: he believed in damnation.