Poems & Glyphs

by Charles Stein, Charles Stein (Illustrator)

Illustrated by Stein with drawings and photographs. Preface by Richard Grossinger.

104 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1973

Reviews

[James Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is actually by the poet Charles Stein but I couldn't figure out how to change the book info. The splendid introduction, however, is written by Richard Grossinger and the book itself was published by Grossinger's North Atlantic Books. Stein's style is difficult to get a grasp on, but there are sections of real brilliance and difficult, yet interesting, music. Grossinger's intro is highly illuminating. He places Stein's work (and his own) within the nebulous influence-sphere of Robert Kelly, who, in my opinion, is probably the greatest living American poet, and discusses some of Stein's methods of approach to the poem, setting Stein's work in the greater context of a poetry-of-process that seeks, through means scientific, occult, geographical, spiritual, to integrate writing within the complexity of life as its lived and not as an end in itself.

Stein's translation of the Chaldean Oracles, available on his website, is really beautiful also, transforming that work into a projectivist poetics that deserves to be read alongside Thomas Meyer's Beowulf translation and Stuart Kendall's Gilgamesh.