Into the Ruins: Poems [Hardcover]

Frederick Glaysher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 1999

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 spiritual Ruins of the 20th Century, Glaysher has his gaze fixed firmly on the 21st Century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A litany of horrors updating Eliot's Waste Land, the book upbraids poets for turning inward only to concerns of the self. --North American Review

Glaysher fits well within the literary tradition, as he shows with his allusions to or mentions of, among others, Augustine, Dante, Yeats, Dostoyevsky, and Hayden; however, his voice is distinct. Among contemporary poets, few have a vision as darkly haunting... Few also have the knowledge and the ability to handle contemporary issues with such presence of language. Out of the mass of recent poetry books, here is one you should read. --Jack Magazine

Fred Glaysher takes us on a journey to that larger dimension of responsibility where thought meets action. This is a poetry of connectedness, which asks us to bring together broken parts of our cultures (both East and West) and search for a new identity, perhaps a new world order. His finely crafted poems are accessible and have a purpose that needs to be heard. --WPON --Margo LaGattuta

From the Author

"Now at the end of the twentieth century, far from withdrawing further into the self and into an obfuscating use of language, poets must turn to viewing and contemplating the real world, where men butcher and kill, love and hate, aspire and sometimes achieve. For out of our experience and contemplation of the past and present, a deeper understanding of history and of what it means to be a human being is now beginning to emerge, opening the way to a new future, in a new century. W. H. Auden once wrote that radical change in artistic style is contingent on "radical change in human sensibility." The unrelenting movement of modern times toward the oneness of humankind has sufficiently been made explicit--an epic movement that allows, produces, and requires a fundamental change in sensibility."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 71 pages
• Publisher: Earthrise Press; 1st Edition edition (August 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967042127
• ISBN-13: 978-0967042121
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,882,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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I studied writing under a private tutorial, at the University of Michigan, with the poet Robert Hayden and edited both Hayden's Collected Prose (University of Michigan Press) and his Collected Poems (Liveright). I hold a Bachelor's and Master's degree from U of M, the latter in English. At the college and university level, I taught rhetoric, American and non-Western literature, humanities, world religions, etc., for ten years.

I lived for more than fifteen years outside Michigan--in Japan, where I taught at Gunma University in Maebashi; in Arizona, on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation, site of one of the largest internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII; in Illinois, on the central farmlands and on the Mississippi; ultimately returning to my suburban hometown of Rochester.

A Fulbright-Hays scholar to China in 1994, I studied at Beijing University, the Buddhist Mogao Caves on the old Silk Road, and elsewhere in China, including Hong Kong and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. While a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar in 1995 on India, I further explored the conflicts between the traditional regional civilizations of Islamic and Hindu cultures and modernity.

I have been an outspoken advocate of the United Nations and was an accredited participant at the UN Millennium Forum (2000).

Political Views Cooperative Global Governance, under a seriously developed United Nations, or successor institution, preferably prior to a nuclear, biological, or chemical apocalypse. Board Member, The United Nations Association of Greater Detroit (UNA-USA)

Religious Views Transcendence, Universality, Reform Bahai Faith, Unitarian Universalist, Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom, Emperor Akbar's Din-i Ilahi, Adi Brahmo Samaj, Tagore's Religion of Man. Member of the Leadership Team for the Troy Interfaith Group. "The Troy-area Interfaith Group exists to invite all faith communities to gather, grow and give for the sake of promoting the common values of love, peace and justice among all religions locally and globally. We believe that peace among peoples and nations requires peace among the religions."

Website: http://www.fglaysher.com
http://twitter.com/fglaysher
Follow me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fglaysher
Google+ https://plus.google.com/101034665675885529190/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry with an artistic and articulate energy., February 4, 2000

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Ruins: Poems (Hardcover)

Frederick Glaysher's poetry is one of artistic energy, and articulate and penetrating voice confronting much of the human experience not reflected by a great many postmodern poets. Indeed, after growing increasingly disaffected with contemporary academic literary culture (especially the Marxist antics of deconstruction) Glaysher resigned from university teaching to launch a success career in real estate. His is a poetry of lyrical passion and clear-eyed depiction. The Thinker: Staring into the portal I see humankind/stretched out on the rack of this century,/gassed in the trenches of Europe,/vivisected in the meat shops of Germany,/forced to kowtow in China and India,/in Africa and the archipelagoes,/by the British, the French, the Japanese,/by all those intent on empire,/intent on the worship of themselves./Staring into the portal I see ourselves/revealed in the terror of what we are,/of what we cannot face, cannot bear,/try always to ignore,/while the cost grows greater and greater,/while like Ugolino we grope over the dead,/the victims of our rapacity,/our devouring lust./"O Master, the sense is hard."