POLYSEMY introduces a poetry that stands to traditional unilinear poetry as a Bach fugue stands to a simple melody. In the case of a Bach fugue, more music than is notated in its score is experienced by the listener; in the case of this new poetic form, more meaning than is contained in its written words is experienced by the reader.

The term "negative capability" was coined early in the nineteenth century by John Keats to describe a state of mind. To be in the state of negative capability is to "become" other persons, other entities of many kinds, and to live inside those others, in so doing enlarging one's own consciousness. It is preeminently the state in which poetry is possible. NEGATIVE CAPABILITY begins with a play, "Keats at Thirty." John Keats died at twenty-five without beginning his life as Shakespeare's true successor and without the love of a woman worthy of him. "Keats at Thirty" gives him his first great dramatic subject and exactly such a woman. A second play, "Equifinality," examines the possibilities of negative capability and the multiverse hypothesis for the lives of three friends in our own century. "Equifinality" is followed by a long story, "Nora Klein and World Peace," in which a young woman gifted in negative capability uses her gift to create a language of peace and an institution that embodies that language. Three essays follow, which provide a rich historical context for negative capability and go on to suggest policy initiatives that apply negative capability to a host of contemporary institutions. The aim of NEGATIVE CAPABILITY is to stimulate the enlargement of the reader's consciousness through drama, story, and essay. Enlargement is personal pleasure; at the same time, enlargement is one's contribution to a humane society.

Long ago, an unusually fulfilling way to live was widely practiced. Knowledge of that way to live was suppressed, and so it remained -- until now. Long ago, it was possible to put all one's thoughts down in writing. The way to do that was forgotten -- until now. This book restores the ancient meaning of community and it brings back the technique for revealing one's thoughts fully. THE ART OF FUGUE does these two things in works of the imagination and of interdisciplinary scholarship.

""If you study the past, you won't repeat its mistakes."" That's a hopeful sentiment, but as a formula for moving forward humanely, it's largely useless. A useful appeal to history would adopt the old saying, ""The farther you back up, the better you jump forward."" But the past to which most historians appeal doesn't go back far enough.The long time coming will be the time of living full lives as individuals while living in harmony with others as communities. Everything we need to do to bring that world about we've already done. We must only add humanity's prehistory to its history. It may come as a surprise that all the elements of a humane future can be found in this expanded timeframe, but it's the case. When we synthesize the life-serving aspects of the deep past with those of the recent past, we'll much shorten the time before the world we deserve comes into being.THE LONG TIME COMING attempts such a synthesis.