INSPIRATION
Virgil and Homer, Dante and Milton, Rumi and Hafiz,
Du Fu and Basho, poets of the Ramayana and griots from Africa, shamans from Indonesia and Australia, Murasaki Shikibu, Emily Dickenson and Jane
Austen, Hayden and Tennyson, Chief Seattle and
Black Elk, Rumi and Milarepa, Shakespeare, Celtic Merlin…and so many other keepers of the living
presence. The power of women and the feminine
spirit weaves throughout—the freestanding muse,
goddess, and Earth Mother to all things sacred;
witness to the Truth. Science, religion, culture, and
the humanities is another collective theme undergirding the writing.
Although the cast of characters is primarily disembodied spirits, this epic presents wholly perceptible concerns about the meaning of modernity (“a
shallow culture undermines everything”), as well
as the flourishing of the human spirit, using modern and accessible language and traditional iambic
verse. However, the experience of reading this book
defies attempts to describe it: poetry, like any art,
21 | NEW CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW
means many things to many people. For this reader
it was like being enfolded into a glorious, celestial,
orchestral song in which every instrument is finely
tuned, timed, and vital to the whole, with different
melodies coming together as a single motion to do
something none of them could do alone.
“Always the world awaits the poet who can
find the right words, more so now than ever,”
says Tolstoy, final words of counsel to Persona after his many crossings. In this book are
such words and the author, like Gandhi, must
surely be “wrapped in selfless practice”—dedicating thirty years of his life to finding them
on our behalf. Parliament of Poets is a worthy
literary masterpiece, the author a curator of
the human story, and the book a living cultural artifact. Once read, you know your life was
impoverished without it.
Review By Julie Clayton