A Luminous Uplift, Landscape & Memoir

(Paperback)

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A Luminous Uplift is a rich compendium of John Brandis new and selected prose spanning four decades of investigative travels through the American Southwest to the far reaches of the Himalaya. John Brandis selection of writings over the last four decades opens with a memoir addressing his awakening to landscape and poetry during his upbringing in California, his counterculture years in the Sixties, his Peace Corps work with indigenous farmers in the Andes, his eye-opening travels in India. Two sections of travel essays follow. The first is focused on his multiple visits to India, Sikkim and Nepal, with vivid descriptions of Khajurahos erotic temples, the ritual dances of Kerala, the monasteries of the Himalaya, his discovery of Ghalibs poetry, his reflections on Baudelaire while lost in the crowds of Mumbai. Section two is focused on life and travel in the American Southwest: the sky villages of Hopi, the Deer Dance of Taos, walkabouts with Japanese poet Nanao Sakaki, his practice of haiku at home in the New Mexico mesa lands. The book closes with the authors celebratory essay on where, exactly, the journey began that led him to New Mexico. On John Brandis writings, poet Arthur Sze comments: They are a form of language on landscape, a form of inscape, that, intimate and moving, are also arresting and revelatory.

Author Bio

John Brandi (b. Los Angeles, 1943) grew up in California, whose coast, mountains and deserts impacted his early life. After graduating from Cal State Northridge (1965), he worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer with Quechua farmers in the Ecuadorian Andes. In 1971 he moved to New Mexico, where he still resides. A recipient a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, he is an ardent traveler, with dozens of publications issued at home and abroad. Recent books include: The Way to Thorong La (Empty Bowl Press), The Great Unrest (White Pine Press) and Into the Dream Maze, limited-edition haibun poems with hand-colored drawings (Palace Press, Santa Fe). In 2017 he received a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award for A House By Itself: Selected Haiku of Masaoka Shiki (White Pine Press). Brandi has made a living on his craft: teaching, lectures on poetry, haiku and the spirit of travel, and by assisting students in writing programs abroad. He gave the keynote address for the Haiku North America Conference in Ottawa Canada and for the Punjabi Haiku Conference, India (2010).