It is not words, song, or art that are tremendous, but the human soul, and what is set in motion when it is stirred to the depths. Where Epics Fail is a collection of over 800 aphorisms from acclaimed writer, essayist and poet Yahia Lababidi. Offering wit and wisdom, inspiration and spirituality, these meditations appeal to our shared humanity and attempt, with art, to guide us through the landscape of everyday life.

About the Contributor(s): Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian-American thinker and Pushcart-nominated poet, whose work has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. To date, Lababidi is the author of 4 well-received books, in 4 different genres: Signposts to Elsewhere (aphorisms), Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Bellydancing (essays), Fever Dreams (poems), and most recently, The Artist as Mystic (conversations).

The Artist as Mystic is a set of lyric conversations between aphorists Yahia Lababidi and Alex Stein. These conversations constitute what Australians call a Songline a set of sacred songs that allow the reader/listener to navigate through an unknown terrain, in this case, populated by tortured and ecstatic souls: Kafka, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Rilke, Kierkegaard and Ekelund. These visionaries are masterfully evoked in this very fine work of biography and criticism. But these writings are more than the sum of notes on a page, they are song. The Artist as Mystic passes the test of all great writing, not only to delight, but to leave us knowing something of the subject, and ourselves, that we hadn t considered before.