What Poets Used to Know: Poetics, Mythopoesis, Metaphysics

"Dear Readers: Enter this book slowly, in the condition of awe, because it is a burning bush of recollection and transmission. Over decades, the poet Charles Upton has paid blood for an astonishingly sacramental and integrated artistry. His voice is movingly disarmed yet fierce. The author knows, cherishes and cultivates the linguistic and symbolic worlds of which he speaks. This volume consists of 19 meditative essays and a moving appendix by Jennifer Doane Upton on sublimity. Poets and musicians, theologians and philosophers, teachers and physicians, liturgists, gardeners and lovers need each and every page of this bright ship. In a world where self-knowledge is rare, fragmentation is the norm, and corporate and cultural spin abound, the truth source of What Poets Used to Know: Poetics; Mythopoesis; Metaphysics faithfully delivers a masterpiece. It is a joy to recommend it whole-heartedly."--Harpist and singer Therese Schroeder-Sheker, The Chalice of Repose Project