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 Persona 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 him a new global, universal vision of life. 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. One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures. Another is the nature of science and religion, as well as the "two cultures," science and the humanities. 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. This text constitutes the ninth draft.

Frederick Glaysher invokes a global vision beyond the prevailing postmodern conceptions of life and literature that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture. East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind ranging over classic literature, ancient and modern, both Western and non-Western, from the dilemmas of modernity in Yeats, Eliot, Milosz, Bellow, Dostoevsky, to Lu Xun, Ryuichi Tamura, Kenzaburo Oe, Naguib Mahfouz, R. K. Narayan, among others, from mimesis and deconstruction to the United Nations, with extensive essays on Chinese, Japanese, and South-Asian literature. Clearly the work of a poet-critic attempting to embrace a larger portion of human experience than the personal postmodern self, The Grove of the Eumenides reaches toward an epic vision of the twenty-first century. All the muck and glory of American and international experience and history mix in the complex tension of a mind struggling with itself and its Age. Acutely perceptive of the spiritual and moral nuances of literature, criticism, and culture, Glaysher confronts the loss of religious faith in the modern world and breaks through to a vision of the unity of the human longing for transcendence.

The Universal Principles of the Reform Bahai Faith collects many of the early writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, published in the West, seeking to restore and preserve their vision of the oneness of God, humanity, and all religions. In addition to all of the 1912 Universal Principles of the Bahai Movement, the book includes Baha'u'llah's Hidden Words, selections known as the Spirit of the Age, an address by Abdu'l-Baha at the Friends' Meeting House in London in 1913, and many Bahai prayers for community and individual worship and meditation. Though beginning in 2004, the Reform Bahai Faith traces its origin to the early Bahais Ruth White, Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, and Julie Chanler, who sought to preserve the Teachings of Abdu'l-Baha after his passing in 1921. They and other early American Bahais understood the Bahai Faith was being turned into an oppressive organization, under what the British Museum document expert Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell judged to be a fraudulent will and testament. Baha'u'llah, the Founder of the Bahai Faith, believed in and taught a moderate, universal religion, grounded in a separation of church and state, not a theocracy, and members of the Reform Bahai Faith seek to recover and renew that saving vision for all humanity. The newcomer to the Bahai Teachings will find here a brief but eloquent and inspiring introduction to the Faith of Baha'u'llah, while people already familiar with it will find a refreshing breeze has returned to revivify and uplift the spirit. This book marks the first publication of the Reform Bahai Press, which will publish several more titles during the next few years.

Drawing on his experience living in Asia and Arizona, as well as his reading of classical literature, both East and West, Frederick Glaysher invokes a global vision beyond the prevailing conceptions entrenched in postmodernism and postmodernity. In Letters from the American Desert, Glaysher reflects on the cultural, political, and religious history of Western and non-Western civilizations, pondering the dilemmas of postmodernity, in a compelling struggle for spiritual knowledge and truth. Fully cognizant of the relativism and nihilism of modern life, Glaysher finds a deeper meaning and purpose for the individual and the world community in the writings and global vision of Baha'u'llah, as expressed in the Reform Bahai Faith. Confronting the antinomies of the soul, grounded in the dialectic, Glaysher charts a path beyond the postmodern desert. Alluding to Martin Luther and W. B. Yeats at All Souls Chapel, Glaysher invites readers to consider the implications of the universal, moderate form of the Bahai Teachings as interpreted by Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'u'llah's son, who had spoken throughout the West in Europe, England, and the United States from 1911 to 1913. Abdu'l-Baha's message of the oneness of God, all religions, and humankind holds out a new hope and vision for a world in spiritual and global crisis. Far from a theocracy, the Reform Bahai Faith envisions a separation of church and state as the will of God, in harmony and balance with universal peace, in a global age of permanent pluralism, in a world of multiplicity, where religion is a reflection of individual distinctiveness, not of communal identity.

Robert Hayden was one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. He left behind an exquisite body of work, collected in this definitive edition, including A Ballad of Remembrance, Words in the Mourning Time, The Night-Blooming Cereus, Angle of Ascent, and American Journal, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Also included is an introduction by American poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, as well as an afterword by Arnold Rampersad that provides a critical and historical context. In Hayden s work the actualities of history and culture became the launching places for flights of imagination and intelligence. His voice characterized by musical diction and an exquisite feeling for the formality of pattern is a seminal one in American life and literature."

Moving beyond Postmodernism, overturning the nihilism of Nietzsche, Peter Marsh, an academic philosopher, weighs modern life in a conversation with his friend, David Emerson, a businessman. Brought together after long separation by the brutal murder of Mary, Peter s wife, a time of devastating loss and crisis, their friendship inspires a dark night of the soul, during which Peter s meditations range over several hundred years of philosophy, politics, religion, social change, the dilemmas of existence, evoking a spiritual vision of the complexities of the 21st Century, the United Nations, and global governance.

The Universal Principles of the Reform Bahai Faith collects many of the early writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, published in the West, seeking to restore and preserve their vision of the oneness of God, humanity, and all religions. In addition to all of the 1912 Universal Principles of the Bahai Movement, the book includes Baha'u'llah's Hidden Words, selections known as the Spirit of the Age, an address by Abdu'l-Baha at the Friends' Meeting House in London in 1913, and many Bahai prayers for community and individual worship and meditation. Though beginning in 2004, the Reform Bahai Faith traces its origin to the early Bahais Ruth White, Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, and Julie Chanler, who sought to preserve the Teachings of Abdu'l-Baha after his passing in 1921. They and other early American Bahais understood the Bahai Faith was being turned into an oppressive organization, under what the British Museum document expert Dr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell judged to be a fraudulent will and testament. Baha'u'llah, the Founder of the Bahai Faith, believed in and taught a moderate, universal religion, grounded in a separation of church and state, not a theocracy, and members of the Reform Bahai Faith seek to recover and renew that saving vision for all humanity. The newcomer to the Bahai Teachings will find here a brief but eloquent and inspiring introduction to the Faith of Baha'u'llah, while people already familiar with it will find a refreshing breeze has returned to revivify and uplift the spirit. This book marks the first publication of the Reform Bahai Press, which will publish several more titles during the next few years.

Beyond postmodernism, Into the Ruins confronts much of the human experience left out of the balance by postmodern poetry, often compared to the Alexandrians and the Neoterics, when writers similarly concentrated on the minor themes of personal life, while ignoring the challenging experience of the public realm. Suffused with a global tragic vision, Into the Ruins has its gaze fixed firmly on the 21st Century.