Vishuddha

"I suggest that you do not hasten through the pages of this collection. Instead, invite the faculties of mind, body, and spirit to approach these verses with undisturbed devotion. Permit every syllable to shape itself within your mouth, moving from your lips, savoring, and absorbing the potency of purpose, intertwining with those recesses within, yearning for acknowledgment through multidimensional consciousness." "Cook's new book is penned with the intimate gentle candor of diary entries, but with the universal touch and appeal of a Whitman poem. Cook's words are cosmic, but near, as Whitman put it "for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." Written with care and grace (and panache and energy), Vishuddha is a delight: savory, but sweet. And the book marks the beginning of a great career, as Emerson once wrote to Whiteman. Let us welcome Cook and this brilliant book full of starshine and the body. " "Ian Peterson Cook's Vishudda inks poetic tapestry in gestural strokes, invoking the troubled body, the haunted landscape, and the rabid cosmic. With concise abstraction and nomadic precision, Cook brings together the Kansas prairie and family, solitude and unusual communion in this divining collection. Vishudda is a gem from a multi-talented artist and poet." "Vishuddha is the Sanskrit name for the fifth chakra (or focal point, used in meditation), located in the throat. It is related to communication, self-expression, creativity and personal truth, all of which I found in Ian Cook's first book of poems. ... if you're prepared to go on the journey with the poet as your guide, you will learn plenty, including new ways of seeing and experiencing the world."