Verdant

<p>Reminiscent of Eastern Bhakti love poetry and Western Troubadour and Green Man traditions <em>Verdant</em> recounts a mid-life passage within a shadowed natural landscape of intense physical and spiritual longing. At the age of 42 queer poet Jeffery Beam fell in love with a younger man threatening his then 15-year relationship. These poems were born of that spiritual alchemical blaze and its substantial healing power. The poet-lover's sacred quest through heartbreak suffering grief and regret progresses ultimately to a joyful ecstatic reunion with the Beloved Divine. A mini-essay Don't Forget Love: Sacred Longing's Dark Project further illuminates the actual mythological and spiritual origins of the poems and describes the poet's lifetime search through experience teachings and literature to a condition in which Desire and Love enrich instead of subsume the Self.</p>