Living Mantra is an anthropology of mantra-experience among Hindu-tantric practitioners. In ancient Indian doctrine and legends, mantras perceived by rishis (seers) invoke deities and have transformative powers. Adopting a methodology that combines scholarship and practice, Mani Rao discovers a continuing tradition of visionaries (rishis/seers) and revelations in south India's Andhra-Telangana. Both deeply researched and replete with fascinating narratives, the book reformulates the poetics of mantra-practice as it probes practical questions. Can one know if a vision is real or imagined? Is vision visual? Are deity-visions mediated by culture? If mantras are effective, what is the role of devotion? Are mantras language? Living Mantra interrogates not only theoretical questions, but also those a practitioner would ask: how does one choose a deity, for example, or what might bind one to a guru? Rao breaks fresh ground in redirecting attention to the moments that precede systematization and canon-formation, showing how authoritative sources are formed.

Living Mantra is an anthropology of mantra-experience among Hindu-tantric practitioners. In ancient Indian doctrine and legends, mantras perceived by rishis (seers) invoke deities and have transformative powers. Adopting a methodology that combines scholarship and practice, Mani Rao discovers a continuing tradition of visionaries (rishis/seers) and revelations in south India's Andhra-Telangana. Both deeply researched and replete with fascinating narratives, the book reformulates the poetics of mantra-practice as it probes practical questions. Can one know if a vision is real or imagined? Is vision visual? Are deity-visions mediated by culture? If mantras are effective, what is the role of devotion? Are mantras language? Living Mantra interrogates not only theoretical questions, but also those a practitioner would ask: how does one choose a deity, for example, or what might bind one to a guru? Rao breaks fresh ground in redirecting attention to the moments that precede systematization and canon-formation, showing how authoritative sources are formed.

Mani Rao's poetry has featured in anthologies by Penguin, WW Norton and Bloodaxe, and has been translated into French, Italian, German, Korean, Chinese and Arabic. She lives between India, Hong Kong and the USA. Ghostmasters is her eighth book, and collects poems published in: Zoland Poetry, XCP, Washington Square, Wasafiri, Tinfish, Softblow, Indian Literature, Almost Island, 91st Meridian and other journals. Advance praise: Mani Rao is an endlessly interesting poet, and in Ghostmasters the full range of her talent is on display. The people, places, and things that haunt this book have their own special expressions, which reveal dark and delightful truths. Watch your step -- Christopher Merrill Mani's poems are death-defying acts of language, more daring than love-poems because they are unafraid to let love go, to release the self from itself. Lost to rediscovered words, miscommunications, fading memories, frogs and natural orces are arranged and rearranged here into new and devastating ways of seeing and thinking about our lives. -- Cyril Wong For several years, Mani Rao has been cutting her own fiercely singular path through the thickets of our language; with each new book her compositional values become both more light and more precise, and her gestures-for this is a poetry of intense ellipsis-more sure, more instantaneous, more stunning. -- Vivek Narayanan There's an uncanny lightness in Mani Rao's poetry, a buoyancy that lifts the reader weightlessly to a safer place. Again and again in this wonderful book, I'm moved and gratified by the effortlessness of Rao's obedience, even as she attends the language with devoted attention. -- Claudia Keelan