Books published by Shanti Arts LLC

Journals of a Visitor shares the intimate coming-of-age story of a young, queer woman trying to find her place in medicine. Inspired by true events at Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospitals, Fae Kayarian's autobiographical collection of poetry serves as a dose of narrative medicine and an homage to the body, heart, and soul. Using medicine as a lens for story-telling, Journals of a Visitor honors the experiences that breathe meaning into our lives and celebrates the therapeutic power of writing one’s own narrative.

In her second poetry collection—James Dean and the Beautiful Machine—Tracy Ross plays with the effects of postindustrial, data-info culture on the human psyche, our aspirations for the future, and our heritage of the past. Along with James Dean, there are appearances by Elvis, Jim Morrison, James Baldwin, and Dylan Thomas. A brilliant commentary on modern life; a deep-rooted yearning for salvation.

In All the Hills, Brian Glaser's poems explore pressing political and spiritual questions related to immigration, asylum, separation of parents and children, displacement of Native Americans, protests, religion, ethics, and moral beauty. Answers may be found through an understanding of the natural world presented by, among others, the mallard duck, pigeon, snowy plover, mudflat, and saltgrass, which says: "The secret to surviving the inrush / of salt from the ocean / is to let it pass right through you."

Breathtaking, the follow-up to Susan Currie's much revered 2017 release, GRACENOTES, further nudges the traditional delivery of poetic verse with type that blooms and sculpts itself around her relaxed photographic captures. In this uncommon and extraordinary presentation of verse and image, all boundaries dissolve, releasing shape, color, and marks from their usual confines. In this collection, Currie salutes the fine art of stepping off the grid and taking refuge in the breath.

What is this fleeting experience that sometimes hits us when we listen to music? Through several short essays adapted from lectures given at Vanderbilt University between 2008 and 2012, author Joshua McGuire answers this question while exploring what it takes to become better listeners of music. McGuire's premise is that listening to music in a fuller way shows us a fuller way to live, clarifying the way we listen to everything. Ironically, better listening involves a recognition of the absence of time experienced amidst profound silence. After all, the purpose of music is to bring us to silence. "As we listen, we become the silence in which music happens. We disappear."

As a child experiencing an unorthodox upbringing, author Kelly Norris dreams of Utopia. Yet at forty years old, she finds herself deep in debt, suffering from stress, and speeding through life without a destination. She longs to return to the values of her parents' generation but doesn't know where to start or how to stop the conveyor belt she's on. One day in yoga class she gets the idea to find people living outside the mainstream, interview them, and see if they can help her forge a new path. As she conducts her interviews of, among others, a Sikh minister, a Rastafarian, and a member of an intentional community, Norris finds herself changing in ways that take her outside the mainstream: she simplifies her life and draws her loved ones closer together; she also reconnects with her spiritual core and reestablishes her relationship with nature.

These elegant poems by Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, inspired by natural settings around the world - Alaska, Virginia, Scotland, and more - explore the spirit and magic of flight through feathers, paired wings, and dreams.

A perfect volume for the seeker and philosopher, this third collection from poet Joseph Murphy offers impressionistic expressions of day-to-day experiences viewed through the spiritual lens of Zen Buddhism. "In such a place, to be / meant no longer being bound / to where or when."

Soulful as a cricket's song serenading a marsh at sunset, two lovers dancing the tango in the sand, or the wind's harmonies causing waves to lap to shore, Sheree K. Nielsen's collection of poems and photographs, Mondays in October, suggests easy movements in nature, and a time for us to slow down-like autumn-and imagine a simpler life. Mondays in October embraces Sheree's unmistakable love songs for the beach, and her eternal companion-water-and the vulnerable, blissful, sensual rhythms connecting them. Received 1st Place in the FINE ART / PHOTOGRAPHY Category & 1st Place in the POETRY Category & Honorable Mention in the COFFEE TABLE / GIFT Category in the 2019 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards.

A collection of the Wally Swist's most mystical work, The Bees of the Invisible regards nature, spirit, and an array of personal memories-recollections from an elder's point of view. From the first poem in the book,-"A Wild Beauty," describing heirloom roses-to the last-"Ley Lines," a commemoration of a longstanding relationship where the poet finds "grace in laying down a memory"-this collection is one of celebration and praise. Also, reflecting the poet's lifelong admiration of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, there are adaptations of several of Rilke's poems not necessarily well-known to many readers, as well as adaptations of work by Georg Trakl, Tu Fu, and others. Most ostensible of these adaptations are Rilke's Das Marienleben, a thirteen-poem sequence dedicated to the Virgin Mary originally written in 1900. The Bees of the Invisible is the third book of a poetic trilogy published in recent years by Shanti Arts-the others being Candling the Eggs (2016) and The Map of Eternity (2018). Together these books represent Swist's most mature and accomplished work, and by far his most mystical writing.

The author of this impressive collection of poems, Joseph Stanton, is both a scholar and masterful practitioner of ekphrastic poetry. His commitment to the form is evident in Moving Pictures, his third collection of ekphrastic poems. In this volume, Stanton offers poems inspired by both European artists (Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, René Magritte, and others) and American artists (Winslow Homer, Thomas Cole, Edward Hopper, and others). In the section Painting the Corners, there are, among others, poems on Andy Warhol's Baseball, Lisa Dinhofer's Spring Street Hardball, and the classic photo of Jackie Robinson stealing home. In the final section, Screens in the Dark, Stanton's poems are about movies, including Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Groundhog Day. Like his previous work, this volume shows Stanton's exquisite sense of perception and insight as he indulges readers with new ways of seeing art.

Deeply instilled remembrances of the Civil War and society's aftermath, along with general references to notions of loss and redemption form the thematic focus of the poems in Lee Circle. Poems include "Still Photograph: Lee's Funeral," "Lincoln's Second Inauguration," "Gettysburg Reunion, 1913," and "Katrina Baby." Lee Circle is a central traffic circle in New Orleans, Louisiana; from 1884 to 2017 it displayed a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

An endearing, thoughtful collection of prose vignettes illuminating some of life's ordinary (and extraordinary) moments. Poet, prose writer, and psychoanalyst Nancy Gerber offers these short pieces as sources of pleasure and reflection. Received 2nd Place in the RELATIONSHIP Category in the 2019 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards.

Belladonna Magic is an invitation and an offering. Step out of your nest and out of your cave. Come to the gully. Stand in that halo of light beneath the 300-year-old sycamore and close your eyes. Can you feel the sun warm your eyelids? Good. Then you've found the perfect spot. Let us recite the words together. All the spells and stories we need today are in this book. They even have photographs to go with them.

The poems in A Machine for Remembering were drawn, in part, from the stories, memories, and experiences gleaned by Justen Ahren while volunteering with refugees living in Moria Refugee Camp on Lesvos Island, Greece. The collection began as a way of processing a personal experience but grew into a document of witness and remembering, recording in poetry the journeys of individuals seeking refuge from the violence they had endured. This is W.S. Merwin's The Lice for this generation.

Bringing together poetry and theology, this collection of poems was inspired by a selection of Rembrandt's paintings of scenes from the Bible. With both elegance and reverence, the poet's words complement these age-old and familiar works of art and enable the reader to view these paintings in new and inspiring ways.

A spiritual memoir and travelogue, God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery is about where you go when you have nowhere left to go. After a difficult childhood and a series of tragedies and misfortunes, author Danusha Goska finds herself without hope for the future. Supported by her passion for travel and discovery, as well as her commitment to Catholicism, Goska decides on a retreat at a remote Cistercian monastery. What results is a story about family, friends, nature, and God; the Ivory Tower and the Catholic Church. God through Binoculars is utterly naked and, at times, politically incorrect. Some readers will be shocked. Others will be thrilled and refreshed by its candor, immediacy, and intimacy. Her previous, highly-rated book, Save Send Delete, was enormously well-received, and readers will find that Goska's ability to tell a masterful story with a powerful message continues in God through Binoculars.

Hearkening back to the medieval devotional books of hours used for daily prayer, poet Elizabeth Bodien takes notice of ordinary moments throughout the day, making them into opportunities for extraordinary attention and reverence.

This extraordinary collection of poems was born from a lifelong fascination with man's spiritual nature as well as with several areas of scientific inquiry that led to an awareness of the entanglements that exist among science, philosophy, and spirit. Poet Michael Baldwin dares to ask "Who are we?" and "What is our purpose?" and "What about God?" The reader finds that the best answers come from the interweavings of knowledge and mysticism, science and metaphysics, empiricism and intuition. The great writings of philosophy and ancient wisdom are helpful, but their greatest value comes from the clues they provide toward finding the answers through our own spiritual and intellectual journey. (Includes ten full-color illustrations by California artist Andrew Ostrovsky.)