Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Preface 1
Introduction 5
Poetry, the Siege Perilous 9
Image, Music, and Meaning 17
More on the Muse 27
Mythopoesis 32
Nirukta and Mantram: The Atemporal Morphology of Language 35
Homer, Poet of Maya 45
The Metaphysical Uses of Metaphor, Kenning, Riddle and Rune in the Teutonic Tradition 56
Metaphysical Lore in Traditional Ballads 66
The Poetic Art in the 21stCentury: a Rant 95
Lew Welch as Teacher 99
The Dark Side of Poetry: Terence McKenna, DMT,
the Techno-Elves, and the Deconstruction of the
Human Form 125
Sufism, Spiritual Romance, and the Union of East and West 131
The Spiritual Exercises of Lew Welch: Essays in
Perceptual Buddhism 141
An Exegesis of the Prologue to William Blake's
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 152
Hamlet's Soliloquy: A Metaphysical Exegesis 158
The City of Byzantium in the Symbology of William Butler Yeats 163
Seeing God 174
Watching Olivier's Lear 175
The Curse of Poetic Subjectivism 176
Every Man (or Inch) a King 184
High Energy Declamatory Verse: An Excerpt from
The Wars of Love 185
Appendix: Occidental Poetics: A Vindication of Spiritual Idealism
(by Jennifer Doane Upton) 191