Holy Fire: Nine Visionary Poets and the Quest for Enlightenment

The growing American preoccupation with spirituality could seek refinement and identity from this anthology compiled by Halpern (The American Poetry Anthology). Defining his criteria of selection more as anomalous power of voice and vision than anything representative, he assembles a powerful gallery. (And excludes some writers-Whitman, Dickinson, et al.-who might otherwise be at home with his theme.) Readers can wander from Rumi's (1207-1273) playfully moralistic ``Dervish at the Door,'' a poem of story and dialogue, to Rimbaud's ``perilous path'' in ``The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,'' onward and inward to Rilke's Duino Elegies: ``Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'/ hierarchies?,'' and finally encounter the ``angelheaded hipsters'' of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The many textures of spiritual experience seem to sway and deepen with a reader's passage. The translators include Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield and Stephen Mitchell. (Nov.)