Don Washburn - Prayer Beads (Paperback)

DON WASHBURN. PRAYER BEADS, A POEM CYCLE. Don Washburn, born in Easton, Pennsylvania, went on to Yale and Denver University, and a career in college teaching embracing English literature, semantics, speech, and metaphysics. During his many years in North Adams in the Berkshire Mountains, he explored Sufism, composed music, enlightened generations of curious students, and published two books of poetry. His Sufi studies began in 1980 at the Sufi Order of the West at the Abode of the Message at New Lebanon, New York, where he became an initiate and a cherag, trained to preside at Universal Worship Services. Now in his 80s, Washburn has circled back to the Christian fold, and this book is his culminating synthesis of his spiritual quest. The poems deliver as much challenge as comfort, and they do not pull back from indicting destructive elements in today’s politics and mass culture.

In his notes about the poems, Washburn writes: “These poems are a kind of testimony. When younger, I sought spiritual knowledge in books. Later, the Sufis taught me it resides in the human heart. But most importantly, throughout my life, I was blessed with intimations that could turn into poems. A prayer bead is a reminder. A prayer bead has the power to summon an inspiration, but makes no pretense to comprising it. Poems that approach the ineffable can also serve as pointers. Nothing to quarrel over, just a finger in the moon’s direction. In the case of God, the finger must point everywhere.”

This is the 224th publication of The Poet’s Press. Published March 2016. 196 pages, 6 x 9

inches, paperback. ISBN 978-0922558834.