The Cry of Merlin

June 27, 2012

Advance Press/News Release:
Just Published by Fisher King Press

The Cry of Merlin: 
Jung, the Prototypical Ecopsychologist
The Dairy Farmer's Guide to the Universe Volume II
by Dennis L. Merritt

Carl Jung can be seen as the prototypical ecopsychologist. Volume II of The Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the Universe explores how Jung’s life and times created the context for the ecological nature of Jungian ideas.  It is an ecopsychological exercise to delineate the many dimensions of Jung’s life that contributed to creation of his system—his basic character, nationality, family of origin, difficulties in childhood, youthful environment, period in Western culture, and his pioneering position in the development of modern psychology. Jung said every psychology is a subjective confession, making it important to discover the lacuna in Jung’s character and in his psychological system, particularly in relation to Christianity. Archetypically redressing the lacuna leads to the creation of a truly holistic, integrated ecological psychology that can help us live sustainably on this beautiful planet.

Front Cover: Jung’s relief carving on the side of his Bollingen Tower, a place he associated with Merlin. The inscription reads, “May the light arise, which I have borne in my body.” The woman reaching out to milk the mare is Jung’s anima as “a millennia-old ancestress.” The image is an anticipation of the Age of Aquarius, which is under the constellation of Pegasus. The feminine element is said to receive a special role in this new eon. Jung imagined the inspiring springs that gush forth from the hoof prints of Pegasus, the “fount horse,” to be associated with the Water Bearer, the symbol of Aquarius.

Dennis L. Merritt, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ecopsychologist in private practice in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Merritt is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich and also holds the following degrees: M.A. Humanistic Psychology-Clinical, Sonoma State University, California, Ph.D. Insect Pathology, University of California-Berkeley, M.S. and B.S. Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over twenty-five years of participation in Lakota Sioux ceremonies has strongly influenced his worldview.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 

Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 

and a growing list of alternative titles. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

News Release: New Publication by San Francisco Bay Area Poet, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

Advance Press Release for July 1, 2010

With great pleasure, Fisher King Press presents a new il piccolo edition:

Adagio and Lamentation
Poems by
By Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
ISBN 9781926715056, 112 pages, July 2010

Naomi’s words and images meander through shadows and light, between demons and angels, yet the poetry is always accessible.  In this moving collection, she often goes back in time, to the days when her family lived in (and escaped from) Hitler’s Europe.  The journey helps inform who she is today, including the indelible scar worn by anyone whose family has borne witness to genocide.

—Stewart Florsheim, author of The Short Fall from Grace.

“(W)e are all/each other’s/raw/material” writes Naomi Ruth Lowinsky in her wise and moving book Adagio & Lamentation, the “we” born not only of others but histories and places, all of this inspiring our very human connection over time to vitality and imagination.  Lowinsky’s music is poignant and haunting, moving the listeners and readers of her poems with the miracle of arrival that is all new life and the celebration of thriving.

—Forrest Hammer, author of Call and Response, Middle Ear, and Rift.

Naomi Lowinsky’s poetry is both fierce and tender, political yet intimate; and, for her, the political is personal.  Lowinsky’s poems “voices from the ashes” and “great lake of my mother” are particularly moving. Her work is deeply lyrical and transformative.  It makes you think and feel.  It makes you wish you’d written these poems.  Adagio & Lamentation is a stunning and memorable book.

—Susan Terris, author of Contrariwise, Natural Defenses, and Fire is Favorable to the Dreamer.

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky was the first child born in the New World to a family of German Jewish refugees from the Shoah. Many in her family were lost in the death camps. It has been the subject and the gift of her poetry and prose—to write herself out of the terror, into life.

Naomi had a special tie with her only surviving grandparent, the painter Emma Hoffman, whom she called “Oma.” Oma showed her that making art can be a way to transmute grief, a way to bear the unbearable. The cover of Adagio & Lamentation is a watercolor by Emma Hoffman—an interior view of the Berkeley home where Naomi visited her often as a teenager. Oma tried her best to make a painter of her, but Naomi was no good at it. Poetry was to be her vehicle.

Adagio & Lamentation is Naomi’s offering to her ancestors, a handing back in gratitude and love. It is also her way of bringing them news of their legacy—the cycle of life has survived all they suffered—Naomi has been blessed by many grandchildren.

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is the author of The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way and The Motherline: Every Woman’s Journey to Find Her Female Roots and numerous prose essays, many of which have been published in Psychological Perspectives and The Jung Journal. Her two poetry collections, red clay is talking (2000) and crimes of the dreamer (2005) were published by Scarlet Tanager Books. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies, among them After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Weber Studies, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Tiferet and Asheville Poetry Review.

Naomi has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times and is the recipient of the 2009 Obama Millennium Poetry award for "Madelyn Dunham, Passing On.” Naomi is a Jungian analyst in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, and a grandmother many times over.