Readings.

I will be giving a reading with John Tipton and Leila Wilson on Tuesday, December 6, 2022 for the Cactus Flower Reading Series at 3454 N. Bell Ave., in Roscoe Village. I’ll be reading from The Hidden Eyes of Things for the first time in Chicago since the book was published this past summer. John will be reading from his amazing new book Believers. And Leila will be reading from new work. Exciting!

Speaking of Hidden Eyes, I read the Neptune section of the poem at the Poetry and Spirituality symposium at Xavier University last month, hosted by the great Norman Finkelstein.

Here is a link to the video from the reading.

Last month, I joined Al Filreis, Laynie Brown, and Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué to discuss H.D.’s legendary poem “Heat,” along with Robert Duncan’s magisterial reading of the poem from the opening of The H.D. Book. This is part of the free ModPo (“Modern & Contemporary American Poetry”) course that runs out of Kelly Writers House and Penn.

Speaking some more of Hidden Eyes, here is a link to a flatteringly perceptive review of the book by the (once again) great Norman Finkelstein. You may have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to get to the review.

And here is a similarly perceptive and impressively argued interpretation of The Sampo by Sean Reynolds. This essay, “Translation for the End Times: Peter O’Leary’s The Sampo,” appears in an anthology called Postmodern Poetry and Queer Medievalisms, edited by David Hadbawnik.

Translation for the End Times: Peter O’Leary’s The Sampo

Finally, “I’m Sorry for Everything.”

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.