Canyon Wren's Rag, under the imprint of Fictional Enterprises, brings together 276 poems, containing fifty years, 1960-2010, of the selected poems of Fil Lewitt, accompanied by some of his drawings. It is the COMPANION VOLUME to The Zen Follies (2010), which is an illustrated, non-fiction, mostly prose book of autobiography, stories, tales, aphorisms, and essays about one man's journey into American Zen Buddhism. Canyon Wren's Rag is in some sense more of the same, but all in poetry, a medium in which Fil Lewitt has been working steadily since the age of fourteen, not a medium that can ever be perfected, but one in which there is constant growth and change. Many of the poems are sonnets, and many are funny, though Lewitt writes no doggerel; the humor is indwelling, with many puns and plays on words. There is also a sense of wonder at the strange worlds we all inhabit, as well as the tunes and music inherent in words. There are nine chapters or sections, which are presented mostly chronologically, though finally based more on content than on strict chronology. The chapters are: Big River; Old World; Advice from Uncle Etcetera; Monastery in Ragtime; Potted Palms; Thin Air; The Narrow Road to the Far East; Mangos in Moonlight; Sonnets To A Muse. Each chapter's poems are from a different place and a different time. Lewitt's poetry is not sentimental, nor is it about religious faith, though the poems trace a path through a life both of the spirit of being human and of the nature of hard work and play. He has been a Zen Buddhist for more than forty years. If you hate poetry, you probably won't like it; but if you can even stand poetry, you probably will. Nothing can adequately describe a poem, so try this one, titled CLUTTER: words, / revolving, / too many women / none loves. // I threw out my furniture / today: ate an apple, / brown rice in a bowl, green tea. / Where are you, / big river? Or this line from another poem: calling all birds with one note / whistling in the breeze. Even long after the big bronze bell has been struck, the reverberations continue outward in waves.

Molly Bender, new to the Santa Fe Police Department, has to join Special Agent Wink Hoodle of the FBI in a task force to investigate strange doings at Guru Ram's religious cult, the sky-blue-robed Jebudindu, in nearby Barsalona, New Mexico. With her new friend Harry Fine, an ex-newspaperman who now writes a nasty advice-to-the-lovelorn column under the name of Miz Tingle, Molly moves out to join the ashram as an undercover agent, where she meets the rabid Ma Lisha, pistol-packing chief assistant to charismatic, handsome Guru Ram; and 16-year-old Angel Cruz, a member of the twelve remaining Hispanic families of Old Barsalona, now renamed New Jericho by the Guru and his gang of loopy malcontents, misfits, winos and freaks. Molly and Harry and Angel try to foil the cult's plans to take over tiny Antelope County by means of imported voters, a gem heist, forged securities, murder, and a last-ditch attempt to poison the thousand unsuspecting members of the cult.

In the grand tradition of "My Secret Life" and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn," this palimpsest of a book, woven into a narrative from the secret journals of more than fifty years of the life of Bill Dingel, becomes a picaresque, or episodic, romance that shows a man who is a lover, not an abuser, of women, girls, boys and even ladyboys, as he moves through the east coast of America of the 50s and the west coast in San Francisco of the 60s, and then through Asia as well, in the 70s through the 90s, finding love and lovers in his own inimitable style. The book is also his personal commentary on life and mores in the second half of the twentieth century, written by a man full of curiosity and openness, with a sense of humor about who he is and how he expresses it. Join Bill as he travels through America and Asia, helping others as he helps himself, a man who truly likes other people and has no inhibitions about exploring the possibilities of love despite a world seemingly full of moralists, government spies and censors, and religious right-wingers. He believes in persuasion, not coercion, and detests men who abuse and cause pain in order to get pleasure. Yet his experiences are often amazing. Bill brings the reader into his unusual world, a world that few see and less experience.

The Zen Follies, by Fil Lewitt, with plenty of B & W photos and drawings of zenbos, oddballs, and unusual locations, takes a close, sometimes ironic and often funny look at the business and pleasures of Zen Buddhism, and tells through stories, essays, autobiography, and some poetry the path one person took to find the Way, and what happened along the way. The book is aimed at the general reader with no special knowledge of Zen. Lewitt has been practicing Zen Buddhist meditation for more than forty years, and now in his 70th year, was ready to write about it. He spent 1972 as a student/monk at Tassajara Monastery deep in the coastal range of central California, and founded and helped direct a small Zen Buddhist community, Big River Farm Sangha, in Mendocino, California, during the 70s and 80s.

At St. Mello's College in Santa Fe, the egghead mainly-male faculty who teach the Great Books List curriculum are dying, one each month, in horrible accidents. The college administration and the local police are satisfied with that verdict, but new Writing Tutor Jack Nowan isn't. At 35, with a fresh-minted Ph.D. and his first university job, he's on the bottom rung. With the help of the cool and lovely Mercy Torcher, the Egyptian-eyed Assistant Director of Admissions and Relations, and Artemisia Parse, a retired lady professor from England, East Coast transplant Jack Nowan slowly realizes that someone is murdering the tutors of St. Mello's, and sets about figuring out who, and why. Every person connected with St. Mello's seems to be idiosyncratic or bitter enough to be the culprit, as Jack stalks his colleagues, stumbling through a wickedly outrageous mix of Anglos, Hispanics, and Indians.

San Francisco, 1967. Tough guy Morry Twych, with his brother Dicky and friend Moosy, has some years previously invented "porno" to replace the old burlesque. They run a successful "theater" downtown. Graduate student Will Rymer has been drafted by the Chicano members of PUS-People Under Slumlords-to be their honky negotiator with the slumlord, a downtown lawyer named Berlitzer. The suave Byron Berlitzer, aka Sleekman, also owns the property where the Twych Brothers operate their theater, and wants a piece of the action. All five men are involved with, maybe even in love with, the gorgeous Li Van Bang, a twenty-year-old Vietnamese-American, who is a clean naive student at SF State by day and a sometime porno film actress by night. TIGHT begins with the men meeting and disliking and distrusting each other, but their self-chosen mission to rescue Li from the clutches of Wavy Hazy and his Hairy Pranksters forces them to work together and get to know each other, despite their differences.