Some Segments of a River: On Poetry, Mysticism, and The Imagination

In this unique and compelling book, the author examines side by side the works of Eastern mystical philosophers and poets and some of their Western counterparts, not attempting to assimilate them to each other, but rather to observe what sparks of insight fly when their writings are brought into alignment. He focuses throughout on their various conceptions of the imagination and, more broadly, of consciousness itself.

In the first part of the book, he reads the work of the great American Mod...