Monday, September 11, 2017

War and The Enemy in the 21st Century

One of the greatest rewards of being a publisher is in reflecting and rejoicing in the many meaningful and timely Fisher King Press publications. It truly is a privilege to be the midwife of these newborns—many of whom arrive far ahead of their time—and to witness their maturing and assimilation into the collective consciousness.

With the wars being fought on many fronts, and with the posturing and possibility of yet more, I reached for Erel Shalit’s Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path (which we published in 2008) and have been reading from Shalit’s chapter on The Enemy, which in the beginning of the chapter, states:
On [the journey], the hero initially meets the Enemy, because the previously unrealized and unconscious dark side, the shadow, is often first encountered in projection, as carried by the enemy. 
In reference to the First World War, Jung wrote in 1916: "As events in wartime have clearly shown, our mentality is distinguished by the shameless naïveté with which we judge our enemy, and in the judgment we pronounce upon him we unwittingly reveal our own defects: we simply accuse our enemy of our own unadmitted faults." (C.G. Jung, Collected Works 8, 2nd ed., par. 516.)
The realization of the enemy shadow—whether persecuted by it, or when trying to flee or to fight it—provides a possibility of energizing the ego. In the inward process of finding one’s pain and resources, and in order to eventually find one’s way to the inner wounds that unsettle us if we do not attend to them, to find the wounded child in our soul, it is necessary to go through the projections of the shadow . . .
This is just the first few paragraphs of the chapter that explores many facets of the enemy archetype. If you have a copy of Enemy, Cripple, Beggar, I encourage you to revisit this timely publication. If you do not have a copy . . . well, here’s a link to purchase a copy of this rich and worthy book: Enemy, Cripple, Beggar.

As the publisher of Fisher King Press, I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the many readers of our publications, and to our authors who have done the hard work of research, mining the depths of their inner worlds, and for bring back to us these timeless gems.
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com

Friday, May 19, 2017

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems

Just Published by il piccolo editions

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems
by Charles Zeiders

Charles Zeiders has given us a great gift; a poet, healer, and lover, he shares with fearless eloquence his heart, his mordant wit, and his empathic depth. Most of all, however, he inspires hope, hope in the human soul. I am captivated by his words and reading him I can feel my soul's enthusiastic approbation. You must give your soul the same pleasure. -Dr. Stephen Martin, Jungian Analyst and President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems teems with psychic and spiritual energy. It’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting that includes the Marx Brothers and splotches of transcendent gold. - Peter Devlin, from the Introduction

Zeiders’ love poems depict the paradoxes of a Christ-redeemed eros . . . But the volume explores the insane side of love…Like Dante’s Virgil, Zeiders navigates us through an earthly Inferno of malignant narcissists, charlatans, and pedophiles…Thankfully, the poet brings us safely to the other side . . . Just as the Christian vision of the universe begins and ends with Love, so Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems provides hope.  -Joseph Walls, from Kiss Epiphany: A Spiritual Critique of Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems

From the exploration of the transfigured state found in the “Love Poems” we turn to the “Other Terrible Problems” . . . Nietzschean nihilism presses upon us. So does war and gore…Psychopaths head our institutions . . . we cannot find a way to offer our eros in the mad contexts they create . . . yet, the lesson is that within the container of love . . . one’s entire humanity can be accepted. -Margaret Connolly, from the Editor’s Afterword

About the author
Charles Zeiders is a clinical and forensic psychologist. His books include The Clinical Christ and Wall Street Revolution and Other Poems.

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems
Paperback: 104 pages
Publisher: il piccolo editions
1st edition
Official Publication date: May 19, 2017
Language: English
ISBN 10: 1771690445
ISBN-13: 9781771690447
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

After Midnight: Selected Poems

Just Published by il piccolo editions

After Midnight: Selected Poems
by Joseph Bobrow

"Joseph Bobrow’s poems are prayers for safe haven. They are sutras for life, for the protection of soldiers, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. We can take refuge in our relationships with one another, and in the beauty of the world." —Maxine Hong Kingston, author, activist, and the recipient of the National Medal of Art from President Barack Obama.

"Joseph Bobrow’s poems know that every day we are dying and that every one of those dying days we are also fully alive. He writes that “memory and inclination are subject to conditions on the ground,” and so they are in these moving poems which are the gift of seeing and of the ability to respond to tragedy and delight in equal measure while weaving them into the fabric of a life fully realized." —Dan Gerber, author of Sailing through Cassiopeia, 2013 Book of the Year Award in Poetry from The Society of Midland Authors.

"Joseph Bobrow’s poems are down-to-earth meditations on the poignant mysteries of life, love, and loss. Not one is abstract or philosophical; every one is a Dharma talk with heart. I kept touching into moments of Bobrow’s experience that mirrored—and enriched—my own. Bows!" —David Richo, author of You Are Not What You Think: The Egoless Path to Self-Esteem and Generous Love

"Reading Joe Bobrow’s poetry makes me want to live more wildly, more fully. His poems live in an irresistible arc between the raw and vivid details of his precious life and a sense of vastness, of spaciousness, of universality. I want to return to these poems again and again. His voice makes me want to reply with my own poetry, and to touch his voice in the darkness." —Stephen Cope, best-selling author of The Great Work of Your Life and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

"In the dense moments of Bobrow’s writing intensity hovers, swells. Pain and bliss rise, fall, rise again. Which will it be moment to moment? Where can we go when it is happening? Seek refuge in a poem? These poems accost us with more of how it feels to be alive. Be ready. —Michael Eigen, Author of Under the Totem: In Search of a Path

About the Author 
Joseph Bobrow is the author of Waking Up From War: A Better Way Home for Veterans and Nations (foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama), Zen And Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation (comments by Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh), and the co-translator of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Guide To Walking Meditation. After Midnight: Selected Poems is his first collection of poems.

Joseph is a Zen master and Roshi of Deep Streams Zen Institute in Santa Barbara, which offers Zen Buddhist practice, interdisciplinary education, and peace-building programs that implement new integrative models of transforming suffering. For ten years, Coming Home Project, a community service of Deep Streams Zen Institute, helped thousands of post-9/11 service members, veterans, families, and caregivers transform the unseen injuries of war. A retired psychoanalyst, Joseph now serves on the faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute and teaches widely.

Title: After Midnight: Selected Poems
Author: Joseph Bobrow
Paperback: 60 pages
Condition: New
Publisher: il piccolo editions (Feb 28, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690429
ISBN-13: 978-1771690423
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Our Creative Fingerprint

Just Published by Fisher King Press

Our Creative Fingerprint
by Nancy Carter Pennington and Lawrence H. Staples

Creative work is the handmaiden of self-discovery. No matter where our creative work starts or what path it follows—with a word, with a note, with a brushstroke—it eventually, with repeated effort, returns us home to the very source of our beings. We are never more true to ourselves than when we are creating something. Inexorably, what we create reflects ourselves as profoundly, faithfully and uniquely as our fingerprints. Each single thing we create, no matter when or under what conditions it was produced, will bear trace deposits of ourselves, a creative fingerprint sufficient to identify us and show who we are just as our physical fingerprints do.

For those who know how to interpret them, our creative fingerprints are as unerring as our physical fingerprints in identifying us. Our creations are self-portraits. We cannot escape ourselves no matter how hard we may try. In all art, there is an underlying voice that cannot be completely hidden or extinguished. In the end, our creative work can reflect only one thing: ourselves.

Topics explored in Our Creative Fingerprint include: Creativity and Inner Truth—part of which examines seven paintings by Frida Kahlo, Divine Discontent: The Inner Urge to Create, Transformation: Cleaning Our Psychic Augean Stables, and Creativity and Rebirth.

About the Authors
Nancy Carter Pennington received her MSW from The University of Maryland. For more than 30 years, Nancy has had the privilege of working with clients on a range of issues: phobias, OCD, grief, depression, obsessive thinking, guilt, and relationships.

Lawrence Staples has a Ph.D. in psychology; his special areas of interest are the problems of midlife, guilt, and creativity. Dr. Staples is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich, Switzerland, and also holds AB and MBA degrees from Harvard. In addition to Guilt with a Twist: The Promethean Way, Lawrence is author of the top-selling book The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness and co-author, with Nancy Carter Pennington, of The Guilt Cure.

Title: Our Creative Fingerprint
Paperback: 92 pages
Publisher: Fisher King Press (January 6, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1771690402
ISBN-13: 978-1771690409
Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives and a growing list of Cutting-Edge alternative titles. www.fisherkingpress.com