The Ways of Being's poetry, for use when living and dying here.

THE FIrst:

By Ms. Frances Dahlberg Ph.D., Editor of the 1981 collection, ‘WOMAN THE GATHERER,’ an Anthropological Anthology.

This ‘WAYS OF BEING’ is the first one hundred poems for use, (all narrative sonnets) the first volume of a planned series, all in Iambic Pentameter. While epochal in scope, each one, each sonnet capable of standing on its own.

So, what is the main topic of The Ways of Being? Maybe it’s about gods and rituals – Valhalla and Karma? Or maybe it’s really about evolution> dinosaurs, all those exciting and intriguing ancients. Many referring to creatures – large and small, good and scary, living in the air, the sea and on land from the tropics to the arctic.

Plants and flora also add to the mix – from rosehips to fairy slippers. Rivers, streams and mountains are not forgotten. Mr. Howard has read in scientific literature, in many disciplines including the works of Shakespeare.

So, is this really a Nature Poem? No, it presents a unified and unique philosophy of existence.

As we read along, the momentum builds, and we start to understand what Mr. Howard is revealing. It is a hopeful and powerful worldview which is particularly welcome in this time of Covid despair.

Please read, THE WAYS OF BEING. You’ll be glad that you did.

PREFASE:

By the author of: ‘THE WAYS OF BEING.’

This book, the first of the three books of narrative sonnets, the outcome of my exploring their craft and trade. After someone of significance advanced the need for a certain issuance. They were my attempt to meet the occasion in some way.

Miserably, failing at what was needed at that time. Leaving these, the dregs and the dross of that attempt. Horribly edited by their publisher here. Still highly in need of correction, yet told worth they’re publishing now.

Existing only because of a single positive comment, made by another individual about a piece, I had placed in a short newsletter. Without which, I would not have considered writing anything at all.

That and my refusing to give up, after being told by a friend, reading them was akin to back pain. Which was exactly what I needed at that time. Having never written anything of this sort, after many revisions, a single body 0f work now.

Because I am running out of time. My wanting to complete, what I thought was my last obligation on the earth. To have been more than just another consumer here. My hope of them, being of some use to maybe someone someday.

Albeit, having my usual doubts now. Always one with the tendency to see the flaws and faults in nearly everything I’ve seen and done in this world. Much less in everyone else. The incipience that emanates from the arrogance of one’s thinking one knows.

Here without any poetic, much less any spiritual credentials, or merit in that regard. Indeed, my formal education, regarding the above, would preclude anyone from both of those. This book, barely a precursor to such. Gaunt for both advanced students in authentic spiritual disciplines and those who have an ear for refined and poignant poetry.

More for those, with a novice interest in their subject matter, who may have stumbled, who are not all that polished, willing to overlook the lack of sophistication in their rhymes and lines, willing to chance bumpy and notional poetry.

Additionally even my personnel desire for this book’s reading, precludes any deep spirituality in its author. Be that (outside of our biological needs) most of mankind’s desires are driven by their ego. Man’s ego, my ego, for the most part, antithetical to deep, transformative experience. It being the author of our bias and subjectivity.

Moreover to claim any self-chosen, spiritual and or transpersonal capacity and/or moral and spiritual credentials, in my opinion, is a disqualifying arrogance on the part of any author who does so. Much less it’s being nearly impossible to say or write about spiritual experiences, that normally cannot be expressed in words.

So, regardless of what’s said by others, no deep spiritual guidance can be found in this author’s books as well. Although I do hope the reader might take a look around for some, at some time in their lives. Or that they might become motivated to have a good look at themselves someday. Even though, for categorical and commercial purposes, its website’s somewhat contradicts the statements made above.

These books here after years of polishing, dithering and escaping from what I should have been doing with my life. Likely to have made my life and that of some others more bearable. Assuming we have a choice in the matter, presuming my choosing their calling and labor.

Albeit still here, with gratitude toward my editors, my publishers and its forthcoming reviewers. Who have so generously provided their help and aid, to someone. Who they had no idea or information about. Providing their insights, taking a chance on these poems, going out on a limb with their publication.

Grateful also for the blessing of a bit of free time, in which to write, generously provided by all that coalesced in the universe that enabled it and their launching possible.

INTRODUCTION:

Also, by Leslie Howard, the author of the: ‘WAYS OF BEING,’

What you’re about to read if you purchase a copy is a loosely contiguous, esoteric, epochal like and sized, narrative poem. Attempting to convey another way to see and approach, both Eternity and the Cosmos, while still alive here.

A singular work that does not require you to read the whole of it, to partake of its ciphers and tidings. Their sonnets capable of delivering their meanings and reckonings individually.

The first of three books of them, written by a blind man. Not anatomically speaking, but more like the three, who happened upon an elephant one day. The first one claiming he had latched on to rope, having grabbed that pachyderm’s tail. The second holding its trunk, saying it was more like a water hose. The third, its leg, claiming it was more like a trunk of a tree. All of them attempting to describe it, each one mistaking the part that they held for the whole.

Like the confabulations of the blind-men above, these poems, but shadows of what they could be. Had more of their subject matter been seen. Merely echoes, barely indicative of the contents of both our and their consciousness. That what we wake up to every day.

Their notions and themes extracted from some preexisting insights, from a variety of sources, reconfigured into rhyme. To reveal them to some degree. Although here, they (the sonnets) sometimes contradict themselves, whenever they’re not supporting one another.

The source of which, includes the Christian Bible, the Vedas, some Yoga S utras’, the Masnavi, some Zen Koans, the works of Shakespeare, the Tao Te Ching and some Hassidic thought.
Also, some from the Diwan and Qasida poetry from the Middle East and Central and South Asia.
Others were gleaned from the so-called Empirical Sciences: Physics, Astronomy, Geology, Biology, and those lesser. Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, even some from History and Mythology rendered and processed into various variants of sonnet poems with rhymes.

Often saying to myself, ‘clarify their observations, leave their feelings alone. Say something, impart something, from their knowledge, their wisdom, their teachings. The more common cathartic and emotional poetry seemed at the time, too self-centered. Even as it is perhaps impossible, (unless transcended) for people, much less this culprit, to work for any great length of time outside the boundaries of one’s ego.

The degree these poems are true to those concepts, ideas and themes of their originators, is of course a variable. Since all ideas and contentions are subject to change and degenerative processes. Due to both my and our biases. My and our ubiquitous egocentric perceptions. When not due to some of our more basic and ever-present translation and conceptual errors.

This work as well, merely shadows, distorted, guilty of those same selection, adoption, the association errors that can skew and distort another person’s work. Errors that cannot help but to be made by so many of us, when interpreting and documenting. Our warping, Existence, Life and our History as it was in time.

Although here, there are some occasional outright deliberate distortions of some of their ideas and contentions. Sometimes my even agglomerating their ideas, creating something that perhaps appears new, when not. According to Hume’s contention, that all new ideas and thoughts are but additions to, or combinations of preexisting ones. Thus, by implication there’s little original, or new here. Albeit his contention is considered lacking in the world today.

At times, an attempt was made, when composing these poems, to be true (to the extent possible) to the originators of their themes for use in our time. All of which necessitating, whenever and wherever there might be found an untoward or negative effect from any one of my interpretations of their work, coming from any one of these poems. Then it is this author who is in error and not the reader, or the publisher, or the originator of the theme who is guilty.

Although sometimes inspiration can supersede that cauldron, that level of the mind. It can glean from the unseen, can gather from celestial libraries. It can hear what’s on the wind. Hopefully there is a trace of that here as well.

The best of which, wishfully emanating from a source, a meadow, a spring, a treasury, either outside of the human mind. Or from a level that articulates with the empyrean. Or maybe just from what a Psychologist would suggest is only the unconscious mind. In any case, the result of my merely holding a question in mind until an answer appeared. Requiring only for it to be put on paper in some way.

These poems about the world’s flora and fauna. About the sun, the moon, and their shadows on the earth. Somewhat evolutionary in both their aim and arrangement in these books through time. Yet by design, having a lack of completeness in their composition. Their subject matter, often untidy and not spelled out in conventional ways. Having an absence of both feelings and factors, people have come to expect in sonnets. Without the usual emotional deliberations during their construction and by design and in their effect on their reader as well.

Hopefully to provoke the reader into some assessment of their own reactions to the sonnets and poems read at that time. Into some self-observation, perhaps even into taking another look, a second look at what else might be found and had from them.

Into (one’s not having emotional or religious feelings) rather some of their own spiritual, psychological and/or characterological insights and intuitions about one’s self, given any one sonnet’s subject matter and that what’s being said in them. To note to themselves what they as people are capable of. Given both this work’s capacity and their readiness at the time.

So not the more traditional kind of poetry designed to have or make one feel. Or the kind promoting or eulogizing something. Rather more to aid, hopefully in one’s ability to see clearer, and further (which normally comes after the effects of a sometimes, ecstatic spiritual experience on the surface level of our being, that generally occurs post a spiritual death of a aspect within the human soul). An unapologetic hybrid of often notional, narrative, storied sonnets violating current definitions and forms.

Albeit considered by my editors too didactic, too philosophical and too esoteric. Yet the intention was not to make any one contention in any given sonnet, more important or more advocated than any other. Despite the slant and spin you will notice if or when you read them here.

So with that, maybe best to see and be somewhat sceptical of their reviews and testimonials on their page. Or, if you like, see the first sonnet in this Website’s Blog. Where you’ll be able to respond to them and or criticize at least the five while there. In any case, thank you so much for your consideration and your reading of their introduction here.

Their intent: to offer another way to see and approach Eternity while still alive here.

AVAILBILITY

To purchase a copy of Volume One of: ‘THE WAYS OF BEING’ from Amazon click here.

FOREWORD, PREFACE & INTRODUCTION