Kirjahaku

These two essays touch on many problems and hindrances that prevent us from becoming mature human beings in the modern world. During the course of these works, solutions are offered and hindrances are creatively overcome.

Eighty-three contemporary poems that illustrate an evolutionary theme. Gradually, from one poem to the next, insight deepens, experience broadens and the matter becomes richer and more personal.

I confess that initially I was reluctant to give in to the influence that was Crete. Eventually I cheerfully capitulated. These poems document the struggle and the ensuing satisfaction.

If we want to be specific, we can say that all poetry and verse worth its salt will draw on elemental thought, on physical feeling and on distinct imagination. Usually one of these preponders. Most of the verses in this volume are led by imagination. A lyrical strain orders many of them. Personal experience enters historically into a few.

I distinguish between modern poetry and contemporary poetry. In this book I discuss and demonstrate what I mean by the latter. One characteristic, perhaps the main one, of contemporary poetry, as of all contemporary creative art, is that thinking and feeling are one. By the same token do beauty and truth not figure separately, as illusion and opinion. This book is itself a contemporary statement in favour poetry, however entirely from a personal practitioner's point of view. I show how it can be done and do not wish to be imitated except perhaps in my belief that contemporary poetry is an eminently worthwhile activity as an aid to mature human being and life.

If we take the light by which we see too much for granted, we may find ourselves lost in the dark, so that we may learn to value it properly. Wisdom arrives with a lamp and teaches us to restore within ourselves the sense of wonder we possessed as children. Our body and mind as one again, not separate as in terms of materialism and spiritualism, respectively, allows us then to perceive beings and world rather than things and the world of things.

These verses were written on a daily basis to make existence more bearable and to make life more possible, when time would stand still and needed a little push.

A few short (minimalist) treatments of some everyday notions. The reader is invited to derive some satisfaction from having his visual field limited to a regular five or six lines at a time. The idea for this concentration of prose, similar to verse, rose out of thoughts on minimalism. For the writer it is a concentration-device.

Four short prose pieces, exploring the two sides of our nature, both human and otherwise. A bit surprising at times, then somewhat thoughtful, lastly 'with tender loving care'.

The first essay casts some light on the difference between morality and ethics and on how we can order our thoughts a little on those topics. The second essay takes us on an exploratory inward journey in the direction of good spirit.

By means of this essay we discover some of the ways in which effective beauty can be harnessed as poetry and how that poetry, in turn, works distinct benefits for us.

The essay 'Our Folk Soul' was conceived as an explo- ration of what had occurred to me for some time as one of two possible ways for us to cooperate with god. My experience of human beings in community taught me that we do not all relate to god in the same way. Simply put, some come to god, others accept god. Some place the emphasis on doing, others on being and behaviour. During the course of this exploration I made some in- teresting discoveries, which persuaded me, in the end, to write an Irrational Ethic, in comparison to the more lengthy exploratory essay on rational ethics I had written many years ago. I hope the reader of these two essays will approach them with an open mind, for they are in no way intended as a contribution to traditional, western, philosophical or theological thought. They make no pretension to aca- demic, orthodox acceptability.

Christ as our greater self - that, specifically, is what this little essay wishes to introduce, to those whose ambitions run in that direction. That we suffer our pain rather than reacting to it and to its apparent causes, this is important, but that we suffer it in Christ, this is what delivers us into our final satisfaction and rest.

We moderns are reluctant to accept that a truly creative motivation affectively underlies our various deplorable aggressions and depressions. This sums up our tragic predicament. It is as if a special dispensation were required before we understand reality as not based on appearances but on faith and good spirit. In the presence of those who do understand, we are more likely to catch on, because our depression and aggression rubs off on them and 'infects' them, whereupon they deal with this, rationally, within themselves, before dealing with us then, mercifully. Their ethical behaviour, by personal example and good works, instils in us a desire for moral integrity and ethical power. We gain a sense of, a taste for, the satisfaction from doing good. We become capable of sustaining that extra dimension to our being which corresponds to the foundation of reality. If we choose, we can allow our thought-processes to be schooled as we read this work, so that we may be cleansed of the modern evil that is criticism.

In an important sense this is a therapeutic book, in that it encourages us to face up to our existential fear while showing us how to go about fearing what needs to be feared, such as any notion at all that death has not been overcome for us. The story is of secondary importance.

A series of one hundred contemporary poems of varying length written in 1980. A quotation from the twenty-fifth poem indicates the nature of the poems: "These are ... proud words / instilled by a harsh environment, / tailored for vexing times / to help see something through.

A critique of society as environment There is the society that prepares us for community, but there is also the society that rejects community. In this essay we hope to make the difference more clear in terms of how we behave while we fear for our individuality when we might rise to the occasion of human-natural affinity. The emphasis is placed on our willingness to familiarize ourselves gradually more and more with the content of our desire for communal love in the face of a corporeality based on fear. - I dedicate this book to those who feel they are rejected by society and to those who have opted out of society, and finally to those who practice communal living based on their human-natural affinity and who therefore no longer have a quarrel with society. It is their struggle that is depicted in this book.

A story of adolescent growth through the horror of experience and the pain of desertion healed eventually due to a mature approach to life.

Thirty-four sonnets, mostly rhymed, serially connected. This booklet is most suitable as a gift.

This is a comprehensive work, setting forth in detail how creative education can operate. Described and observed in practice are the skills of the educator of both children and adults. Emphasis is placed on human nature as inwardly original and outwardly communicable, and on the ability of the teacher to deal with the pupils' disabilities and inabilities as initially transferred to himself. Comparison is drawn with standard and artistic education.