The Influence of Mysticism on 20th Century British and American Literature

by David Garrett Izzo

This volume discusses the relationships between the philosophy of Mysticism, which traces its lineage back into prehistory, with that of the world of more traditional philosophy and literature. The author argues for the centrality of mysticism's role in the philosophical and artistic development of western culture. The connections between these worlds are underscored as the author examines the works of Heraclitus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Yeats, Æ (George Russell), T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Huxley, Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Tony Kushner, among others.

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

David Garrett Izzo is an English Professor emeritus who has published three novels, three plays, five short stories, and 17 poems, as well as 16 books and 60 essays of literary scholarship. David has published extensively on the Perennial Spiritual Philosophy of Mysticism (Vedanta) as applied to literature. He is inspired by Aldous Huxley, as well as Bruce Springsteen, his wife Carol and their five cats: Huxley, Max, Princess, Phoebe, and Luca. Two of his novels are fantasies with cats as characters: Maximus in Catland (compared to C.S. Lewis) and Purring Heights. The third is a historical novel about Huxley and peers, Details and reviews at www.davidgarrettizzo.com

January 2017
Poems: (see photo)
Permutations Among the
Nightingales
Winner of the Vibrant Poetic Voices Award
Shade Seekers Press No. 2

Advance Praise:

With remarkable elan, David Garrett Izzo unfolds the secret origami of our minds and constitutions in his new book, Permutations among the Nightingales. It’s a fierce collection of philosophical raps, tributes to culture heroes, and the naked autobiography of a man to whom life has given both great pain and great pleasure. Reading Izzo’s poems, you wind up in unexpected places, for he is one of the great secrets of American literature.
Kevin Killian, November 2016.

(Kevin Killian is an American poet, author, editor, and playwright. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009.)

The poems in David Izzo’s Permutations Among the Nightingales are full-voiced and whole-hearted. They range from quiet meditations--on teaching, on power, on poetry--to unabashed celebrations of the poet’s heroes—Springsteen, Auden, Huxley, and less famous exemplars of the twin arts of seeing clearly and living consciously. In a time when much poetry is guarded and cautious, these brave poems don’t flinch from expressing the big emotions—heartbreak, gratitude, rage, tenderness.
April Lindner, December 2016

(April Lindner’s first collection of poetry, won the Walt McDonald First Book Prize, Skin (2002). In 2010, she published a young adult novel, Jane. She teaches at St Joseph’s University, Pennsylvania.)