A rich mythic, poetic and philosophic tradition that here offers more obscurity than enlightenment.
Pedersen’s (The Spiral Arms, 2012, etc.) short prose-poem-canticle-chapbook to Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, is an “homage to the soul of the sacred feminine.”
Pedersen seeks to illuminate “the Kingdom of Heaven as here and now.” A typical passage, stuffed with colorful words and high-sounding diction (not to mention improper commas), reads: “The scintillating flame, of an orange-descending sun. A white fire to the waves. The red-iridescent mystery, of this sun-movemented [sic] blaze. Withal the white-stellar and invisible ellipse, sifting like silver silk, through the deep-velvet dark.” The chapter concludes with “Remember when you pray…that you are a god,” but Pedersen forges little logical or even poetic relationship between that conclusion and the foregoing flame, fire, sun and starry sky. Pedersen explains in a preface that he’s being deliberately elliptical to achieve “an even greater concentration of meaning” and thus “a greater potency,” yet “this approach relies upon the work of time, the effort of seeking”—that is, on the reader’s effort. Nonetheless, deciphering powerful meaning from Pedersen’s truisms—we make our own fate; the Kingdom of Heaven is within—can be problematic and becomes especially difficult in impossible-to-parse accretions: “That in time our thoughts become finished, and yet the mind which does not disappear, is nevertheless and in its subtle cognitions, eclipsed utterly, by the wide-intricate wings of the Spirit and what it whispers to us, in dreams.” In some passages, the choppy sentences could be rearranged with little change in meaning. Additionally, the frequent repetition, particularly of color names, becomes very tiresome—argent-purple, white-argent, purple-argent, and gold-argent, for example, occur within one short three-page chapter.
A rich mythic, poetic and philosophic tradition that here offers more obscurity than enlightenment.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-1452564821
Page Count: 86
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.
An essayist and novelist turns her attention to the heartache of a friend’s suicide.
Crosley’s memoir is not only a joy to read, but also a respectful and philosophical work about a colleague’s recent suicide. “All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way,” she begins, in reference to the thief who stole the jewelry from her New York apartment in 2019. Among the stolen items was her grandmother’s “green dome cocktail ring with tiers of tourmaline (think kryptonite, think dish soap).” She wrote those words two months after the burglary and “one month since the violent death of my dearest friend.” That friend was Russell Perreault, referred to only by his first name, her boss when she was a publicist at Vintage Books. Russell, who loved “cheap trinkets” from flea markets, had “the timeless charm of a movie star, the competitive edge of a Spartan,” and—one of many marvelous details—a “thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, seemingly scalped from the roof of an English country house.” Over the years, the two became more than boss and subordinate, teasing one another at work, sharing dinners, enjoying “idyllic scenes” at his Connecticut country home, “a modest farmhouse with peeling paint and fragile plumbing…the house that Windex forgot.” It was in the barn at that house that Russell took his own life. Despite the obvious difference in the severity of robbery and suicide, Crosley fashions a sharp narrative that finds commonality in the dislocation brought on by these events. The book is no hagiography—she notes harassment complaints against Russell for thoughtlessly tossed-off comments, plus critiques of the “deeply antiquated and often backward” publishing industry—but the result is a warm remembrance sure to resonate with anyone who has experienced loss.
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374609849
Page Count: 208
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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PERSPECTIVES
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