Gnosis: Psalms for a Secular Age

"Gnosis" is of a world generative of God while seemingly blind to His presence. The individual poet becomes self (the paramount human project), becomes God. Cain” narrates the Biblical story with a decidedly modern slant. Studies from Balthus” depicts those bewitching portraits contrived of ordinary young ladies, pictures so powerful for loveliness that they transcend the prurient. Merisi’s Lads” traces the final moments of the first modern artist, a homosexual criminal and transcendent genius, his dying toward immortality and the very works which delivered and ensured him unto it, Caravaggio, the wayward Master. Egon” is a series from the works of the great Austrian, Egon Schiele, who, with his beloved wife, died in the world-wide influenza epidemic between the two great wars. The descriptions are emotionally charged and highly erotic. The sixth sequence, Metaphysical Quatrains,” reprises both the atmosphere of Gnosis” and the wrenching carnality of two through five. After the Crucifixion” is essentially what the title describes, with a slant of ITS own, of course, a contemporary twist to the telling. The Tao of Cannabis” is the author’s A Second Coming” as poem. Sequence for an Only Brother” deals with the loss of a young friend to AIDS. The Visit” concludes the book, the fanciful rendering accuracy in the manner that a painting supercedes the photograph it would otherwise slavishly recreate.Swartz, David is the author of 'Gnosis: Psalms for a Secular Age', published 2006 under ISBN 9780595422210 and ISBN 0595422217.