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."

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.

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.

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.

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.