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The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem Hardcover – 1 November 2012
Frederick Glaysher (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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"Gazing from the moon, we see one Earth, without borders, Mother Earth, her embrace encircling one people, humankind."
Thirty years in the making, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.
Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Poet of the Moon on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach a new global, universal vision of life.
One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures. Another is the nature of science and religion, including quantum physics, as well as the “two cultures,” science and the humanities.
All the great shades appear at the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility: Homer and Virgil from the Greek and Roman civilizations; Dante, Spenser, and Milton hail from the Judeo-Christian West; Rumi, Attar, and Hafez step forward from Islam; Du Fu and Li Po, Basho and Zeami, step forth from China and Japan; the poets of the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana meet on that plain; griots from Africa; shamans from Indonesia and Australia; Murasaki Shikibu, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Austen, poets and seers of all Ages, bards, rhapsodes, troubadours, and minstrels, major and minor, hail across the halls of time and space.
That transcendent rose symbol of our age, the Earth itself, viewed from the heavens, one world with no visible boundaries, metaphor of the oneness of the human race, reflects its blue-green light into the darkness of the starry universe.
- ISBN-10098267788X
- ISBN-13978-0982677889
- PublisherEarthrise Press
- Publication date1 November 2012
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions15.24 x 2.06 x 22.86 cm
- Print length294 pages
Product description
Review
"Certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves." --Albany Poets News, New York
"A great epic poem of startling originality and universal significance, in every way partaking of the nature of world literature." --Hans Ruprecht, CKCU Literary News Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, author on Goethe, Borges, etc.
"A remarkable poem by a uniquely inspired poet, taking us out of time into a new and unspoken consciousness..." --Kevin McGrath, Lowell House, South Asian Studies, Harvard University, author on the Mahabharata
"Mr. Glaysher has written an epic poem of major importance that is guaranteed to bring joy and an overwhelming sense of beauty and understanding to readers who will travel the space ways with this exquisite poet. I am truly awed by this poet's use of epic poetry that today's readers will connect with, enjoy and savor every word, every line and every section. Frederick Glaysher is a master poet who knows his craft from the inside out, and this is truly a major accomplishment and contribution to American Letters. Once you enter, you will not stop until the end. A landmark achievement. Bravo! --ML Liebler, Poet, Department of English, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
"And a fine major work it is." --Arthur McMaster, Department of English, Converse College, in Poets' Quarterly
"Very readable and intriguingly enjoyable. A masterpiece that will stand the test of time." --Poetry Cornwall, No. 36, England, UK
"Bravo to the Poet for this toilsome but brilliant endeavour." --Transnational Literature Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
"Glaysher is really an epic poet and this is an epic poem! Glaysher has written a masterpiece..." --The Society of Classical Poets
"This Great Poem promises to be the defining Epic of the Age and will be certain to endure for many Centuries. Frederick Glaysher uses his great Poetic and Literary Skills in an artistic way that is unique for our Era and the Years to come. I strongly recommend this book to all those who enjoy the finest Poetry, and what is more, with a profound spiritual message for humanity." --Alan Jacobs, Poet Writer Author, London, UK
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Product details
- Publisher : Earthrise Press (1 November 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 294 pages
- ISBN-10 : 098267788X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0982677889
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 2.06 x 22.86 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 922,532 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 946 in American Literature Textbooks
- 1,232 in Epic Poetry (Books)
- 1,872 in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Poetry (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

FREDERICK GLAYSHER is an epic poet, rhapsode, poet-critic, and the author or editor of ten books.
In 1977, Glaysher took a theatre course in the Interpretative Reading of Poetry, learning that the Greek rhapsodes would travel throughout ancient Greece reciting Homer. Before long the idea of writing an epic poem became compelling and the dream that one day he might also revive the art of the rhapsode.
Glaysher studied writing under a private tutorial, at the University of Michigan, with the poet Robert Hayden and edited Hayden's prose and poetry. He holds two degrees from the University of Michigan, has lived and taught in Japan and on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation in Arizona, traveled widely in China, was a Fulbright-Hays scholar to China and a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar on India.
For his three essays on the poet Robert Hayden, others on the United Nations, world religions, epic poetry, such writers as Tolstoy, Tagore, John Milton, Milosz, and Saul Bellow, see his two collections of essays, The Grove of the Eumenides and The Myth of the Enlightenment.
More than forty epic poetry readings and performances at the Michigan Theater Building (Ann Arbor), Theatre NOVA (Ann Arbor), Hathaway’s Hideaway (A2), Underground at Hilberry Theatre (WSU), Shelton Theater (San Francisco), University of Michigan’s Rackham Amphitheatre, Wayne State University, Saginaw Valley State University, Detroit Public Library, Troy Public Library, Hannan Café, Austin International Poetry Festival (TX), Paint Creek Unitarian Universalist, Birmingham Unitarian, Grosse Pointe Unitarian, Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington, Troy Interfaith, Theosophical Society of Detroit, Crazy Wisdom Bookstore, East Side Reading Series, MUSINGS, Barnes & Noble, BookWoman, Espresso Royale, Sweetwaters, Himalayan (Berkeley, CA), Cafe International (SF), Sacred Grounds Café (SF), Tuesdays at North Beach Branch Library (SF), Florey’s Books (Pacific, CA), The Farmhouse, etc.
Download the Program for Solo Performance
https://earthrisepress.net
Email: fglaysher@fastmail.com
Website: https://fglaysher.com
Blog: https://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe
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The poem is described as epic suggestive of ambition. Mention epic poetry and chances are most would think of the likes of Homer, or Virgil or the Ramayana from which the Bhagavad Gita comes. In many ways it goes against the way many twentieth century poets have written, though there have been longer poems that have epic qualities, for example Odysseus Elytis's The Axion Esti , or Derek Walcott's Omeros by Walcott, Derek ( Author ) ON Jan-03-1998, Paperback . But possibly even the ambition of these is dwarfed by what is attempted here.
The writer of Parliament of Poets, Frederick Glaysher is obviously aware of this as he states in his introduction to his long poem. He names his poetic models as Farid Attar's and Chaucer, themselves mighty predecessors. Attar's poem The Conference of the Birds (Classics) is a spiritual odyssey, while the Chaucer poem is unknown to me, but I will be seeking it out after reading this. This is part of Glasher's plan because he is attempting to unify lessons from many traditions, eastern and western, and there are references to many poets from English language ones to ones from places a diverse as China, India, Mexico and Poland, as well as many times. This is an attempt to fuse a truly global vision drawing on many poetic traditions.
To create this in the narrative of the poem there is a gathering on the site of the first moon landing of huge number of poets under the auspices of the god Apollo, who was a patron of poetry. The Persona, who is the narrator, and perhaps the writer's alter to go on a journey of self discovery, learning to discover about himself and his poetic mission. The term poet is used more broadly than as is usual in English (in some languages for example "writer" includes both prose and verse authors). We therefore meet Miguel de Cervantes who was strictly a prose writer, as well a Jane Austin, similarly Black Elk to my knowledge did not to my knowledge write poetry. There are also mythic figures and visionaries, and through the poem we meet them, some of them now endowed with magical powers, for example the Mexican poet Octavio Paz now has shape-shifting powers.
Knowing who some of these figures are, though they are explained in the text may be the biggest problem some readers have here. But this need not be too big a difficulty, because for all the erudition on show here, Glasher is a lucid writer and the narrative is by and large direct rather than hermetic and allusive which puts some readers off modern poetry. The poem takes the reader on a journey through the world, from east to west. The choice of poets as guide is intriguing, especially the one that is perhaps most personal to him, namely Robert Haydn who appears to have been one of Glasher's poetic mentors. But this personalising of the quest itself gives this epic a personal aspect, grounding it in his experience. For those poets I haven't read, I will be looking them up.
This is a highly stimulating read. The range of reading on display is impressive. It is refreshing to see poetry with a mission, and a suggested role in the modern world. This work is an impressive intellectual as well as visionary feat as well as being poetic. It will certainly be of interest to those of a philosophical, poetic and visionary frame of mind. How far Glasher succeeds in his ambition, I will leave to readers. My one problem was reading this in a Kindle version, which plays a little with the lines, and makes it less easy to flip between pages and cross reference. I will be getting a book version of this work. There is much to ponder on here as well as to relish.


Yet, as Kimon Friar puts it so beautifully in the introduction to his translation of Kazantzakis' "Odyssey", true epic poetry tells us, readers, a Tall Tale. So does Homer; so does Valmiki in the Ramayana; so do Vergil, Dante, Keats with his Hyperion, Kazantzakis.
Glaysher doesn't. Apart from the protagonist's quite surprising first visit to the poets' assembly on the moon, the story is flat, and hardly saved by verbal or linguistic gems. "Flat", in the sense that the entire epic consists of a series of visits to high places, witnesses on planet Earth, to religion and human creativity. A cheese soufflé that sags as soon as it as taken out of the oven.
All of this vain babbling is not worth even a couple of lines of the prologue to Kazantzakis's Odyssey, or a single Homeric comparison in the Odyssey, or a single shloka of Valmiki.

