Showing results by author "Jabez L. Van Cleef" in All Categories

Traditional indigenous cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the relationship between human and ecosystem health, something global culture is trying to rediscover under the label of sustainability. A spiritual resource for sustainable living, this poem records the creation story of the Hawaiian people. It was translated into English by Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii in 1897, while she was under house arrest at Iolani Palace, for her refusal to cooperate with overseers from the U. S. mainland. The poem tells the origin of the stars in the heavens and ...

Reminiscent of Carl Sandburg's beloved children's poetry, these stories were ad-libbed by the author for his children and then written in a notebook for later refinement, which never came to pass; so that they retain the atmosphere of spontaneity and lame humor often encountered in the last half hour before bedtime, as in this example: "I would say the highlight of the whole evening came during the Amateur Hour when three of the most common backyard vegetables from our own neighborhood sang a lovely trio of their own devising, which means they wrote the words and music, taught the song to ...

Since the beginning of time, human beings have told the story of their own beginning, and of the origins of the four directions, the heavens,the God-People, the earth, and all its creatures. The Navajo People tell a story of great psychological power and depth.First recorded by 19th century ethnographers, the Navajo Creation story is here interpreted as an epic-length poem.Jabez L. Van Cleef has written poetic versions of spiritual texts from all of the world's great religious traditions. His voice in dramatic readings explores the fine distinctions between metered prose and music, by creating...

Traditional indigenous cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the relationship between human and ecosystem health, something global culture is trying to rediscover under the label of sustainability. Since the beginning of time, human beings have told the story of their own beginning, and of the origins of the four directions, the heavens, the God-People, the earth, and all its creatures. First recorded by 19th century ethnographers, the Navajo Creation story is here interpreted as an epic-length poem. "In the skin of your fingertip: Before your eye ...

The first monument of real Christianity among the Saxons was the Heliand, an epic on the life of Christ in Old Saxon alliterative verse, dating from about 830. The original work attempted to make the newly imposed Christian religion intelligible to the warlike Saxons. The Heliand, extant in four manuscripts, and the fragmentary Old Saxon Genesis, are all that remain of Old Saxon poetry. This poetic harmony of the Gospels employs modern English alliterative verse couplets, in a complex structure of 75 cantos, to generate a vigorous retelling of the story of the Christ in a swaggering, epic ...

Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I, in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality,” or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, photography, theatre, filmmaking, music, comedy and other media as well. Works of surrealism feature the element of ...

Traditional cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation for the unity of all human spirit in its quest for knowledge of the Divine. Here a medieval Muslim mystic records his living meditation; Rumi wrote three centuries later on Al-Hallaj’s words, ‘I am God,’: “People imagine that it is a presumptive claim, whereas I find it is really a presumptive claim to say ‘I am the slave of God’; for, ‘I am God’ is an expression of great humility. The man who says ‘I am the slave of God’ affirms two existences, his own and God’s; but he that says, ...

Traditional cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the need for human beings to understand each other, leaving aside religious partisanship in a search for common understanding of the worldly, the transcendent, and the divine. Poetry and music may build such lasting bridges and provide disparate cultures with forms for public celebration. To promote singing, and a stronger sense of community, THE SONG OF LUKE retells the gospel story as a poem arranged in stanzas of four lines with lines of four beats, rhyming every other line, a ballad form called ...

Traditional cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation for the unity of all human spirit in its quest for knowledge of the Divine. Here a medieval Muslim handbook for right living is interpreted in modern English verse. When I am come above these things of earth, I find a heaven in my contemplation: Eternal Beauty, nameless, featureless, No longer masked nor hid by folds of flesh. Two hundred years later, Rumi paid Ghazzali the compliment of incorporating several of his allegories into his own epic work, the Masnavi. Jabez L. Van Cleef takes foundational ...

Traditional indigenous cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the relationship between human and ecosystem health, something global culture is trying to rediscover under the label of sustainability. A spiritual resource for sustainable living, this poem records the testimony of a shaman from the nomadic people of Northern Siberia, and then tells a Russian folk-tale derived from the animistic, shamanic world view. The indigenous voice tells of the struggle with the land for survival, the need to preserve traditional ways, the need to survive predation ...

A verse paraphrase of the biblical book entitled "The Wisdom of Solomon" from the Apocrypha.

Traditional indigenous cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the relationship between human and ecosystem health, something global culture is trying to rediscover under the label of sustainability. A spiritual resource for sustainable living, this poem records the creation story of the Sami, a nomadic people of Northern Europe, and then retells several Scandinavian folk-tales derived from their playfully animistic world view. Their deep kinship with the wild is shown in their awe for bears: The bear is more like people are Than any other thinking ...

A flower of mystical insight from 14c. England, this book records the visions and prescient theological world-view of Julian, an anchoress at Norwich. Her unique and visceral retelling of both the birthing and the dying of Christ, the first book to be written in English by a woman, has never been duplicated in the clarity and eloquence of its language. Here, preserving the humility of the original in a modern idiom, is a metered poetic version of her revelations: …she who’s Mother of our Savior Is mother of all who shall be saved; And our Savior our very Mother, In whom we are endlessly...

Traditional cultures in many parts of the world have displayed a profound appreciation of the need for human beings to understand each other, leaving aside religious partisanship in a search for common understanding of the worldly, the transcendent, and the divine. Long before the birth of Jesus, Confucius tried to characterize human ethics and responsibilities in both personal and social spheres. The Book of Change is here arrayed with aphorisms of this thoughtful Chinese philosopher and related commentary: Good people find ways to be strong, And they do not cease from trying. One of my ...

Jabez Van Cleef arrived at Cornell in June of 1966 as a member of an experimental program, funded by the Ford Foundation, which was intended to provide 48 liberal arts students a path to earning PhD's within six years. The first summer the group lived near Clara Dickson hall in a building called Phillips house. Then in the fall they moved into the Cornell Heights Residential Club on the fringe of the campus in Cayuga Heights.In spite of the inherent stress of this collective competitive enterprise, the special students established a kind of enforced mutual solidarity because of their ...

"The Birth of Propaganda" is poetic adaptation of the essay "Propaganda in a Democratic Society," by Aldous Huxley, which expresses his warnings about the manipulation of language by totalitarian governments and corporations. The original essay is interpreted as a poem, written and voiced by Jabez L. Van Cleef. From a review on Garageband.com by Nicolas Walls: "Well spoken... this is a piece that sounds like it was written in a different time. The voice is clear and punctuated very well. It sounds like an essay from a great thinker. Not sounds like...but is! This is too much information to ...

The Palimpsest of Human Rights is an experimental spoken word production which combines verse interpretations of the prose writings of Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, and Henry Thoreau. The influence of new, temporally-bound ideas on succeeding generations is revealed in a continuous discourse. The physical idea of a palimpsest (writing over the top of an existing text in a manuscript) is here extended to an aural experience. When the texts are read aloud, one over the top of another, the sound preserves some part of the utterance of each original, while concealing some part of the others...

Continuing in the grand tradition of Rumi and Kahlil Gibran, explore the light within your own sensuality in the company of Kabir, the incomparable 15th century poet, weaver, mystic and musician of Benares. "Open the window to the west, / In the sky of love, now be lost; / Drink the sweeter honey that steeps / And imbues with heat, the petals / Of the lotus of the heart's lips. / Receive the waves in your body: / What splendor is in the warm sea! / Hearken to the sounds of conches / And bells, rising through the branches." The poetry of this 15th century mystic has been recreated in modern ...

Richard Rolle of Hampole, the first of four great 14th century English contemplative authors, is often called, with justice, “the father of English mysticism.” For him the life of contemplation was essentially a musical state, and song, rightly understood, embraced every aspect of the soul’s communion with reality. Sudden outbursts of lyrical speech and direct appeals to musical imagery abound in his writings, as in those of no other mystic; and this constitutes their outstanding literary characteristic, as he declares himself at the very dawning of his mystical vision: Looking to ...

Thomas Paine claims the title The Father of the American Revolution because of Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; the work quickly spread among the literate, and, in three months, sold 120,000 copies throughout the American colonies (with only two million free inhabitants), making it a best-selling work in eighteenth-century America. It is here given a concise metered form suitable for theatrical adaptation and public performance.