Selected Poems of Emanuel Xavier
For the first time ever, a selected poems of Emanuel Xavier, renowned LGBTQ poet and one of the Latinx community’s treasures.
When he first emerged as a Nuyorican Poets Café slam poet in the 1990s, Emanuel Xavier quickly took his place as one of the first openly queer, celebrated, controversial and significant poets of the era. Now, decades later, as a former homeless teen and a hate crime survivor, Xavier still stands as one of America’s most inspiring and powerful voices.
Gay Nuyorican life is limned and exalted in these scintillating poems. Xavier, a fixture at Nuyorican Poets Cafe slams in Manhattan and a star of HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, gathers 28 poems that infuse searing social and political commentary into achingly personal reflections. Many paint a panorama of New York that is bustling and vibrant: ‘Ricans and Dominicans drive around / with black-faced virgins and saints on their dashboards / blasting rap and freestyle / down the streets.’ The poet’s collection conveys his struggle as a gay man in an often homophobic culture in tones that range from the bruised confessional in ‘Deliverance’ (‘Wiping / myself / staring at the blood / shit / scum / from the last trick / that once again / left me bruised / deep inside’) to the prophetic voice of ‘If Jesus Were Gay.’ (‘If the crown of thorns were placed on his head / to mock him as the / ‘Queen of the Jews’ / If he was whipped because fags are considered / sadomasochistic sodomites, / If he was crucified for the brotherhood of man / would you still repent?’) There’s a lot of pain from separation and repudiation in Xavier’s verse—from his biological father’s abandonment of the family, his mother’s rejection of his gay sexuality, and America’s disdain for Latino immigrants. The volume is thus full of poetic portraits of outsiders and castoffs that can take strange and hallucinatory forms, as in ‘Bushwick Bohemia,’ where a slacker is ‘lying shirtless on the couch blunted out of his mind / staring at the roach on the ceiling / one single roach in a vast desert / or maybe an alien exploring a new world’—a grungy, Kafkaesque yet somehow hopeful and even liberating tableau of arrival and persistence. And the poet’s life generates bleak, bracing wisdom in ‘Beside Myself’: ‘You are not going to be remembered. / The best thing you ever did was keep a cat / alive for over sixteen years. / All you have is that rent-stabilized apartment / with the cracked paint and broken windows.’ Xavier’s many fans (and newbies as well) will be entranced by his evocative language, subtle rhythms, and fearless gaze.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The Magic of the Horseshoe
In The Magic of the Horseshoe Lawrence presents his study of the origin and history of popular customs and beliefs affords an insight, otherwise unattainable, into the operations of the human mind in early times. Superstitions, however trivial in themselves, relics of paganism though they be, and oftentimes comparable to baneful weeds, are now considered proper subjects for scientific research. While the ignorant savage is a slave to many superstitious fancies, which dominate his every action, the educated man strives to be free from such a bondage, yet recognizes as profitable the study of those same beliefs. It has been the writer’s aim to make the chapter on the horseshoe as exhaustive as possible, as this attractive symbol of superstition does not appear to have received hitherto attention it merits. Also included are other folklore notes on the folklore of common salt, omens of sneezing, days of good and evil, superstitions dealing with animals, and the luck of odd numbers.
The Secret Commonwealth
The Secret Commonwealth is a fascinating and enigmatic text about Celtic fairies. Written in 1691 by a Scottish clergyman, Robert Kirk, though not printed until the early 19th century, this work is an unusual account of the fae, and a complex of still mysterious extrasensory phenomena including poltergeists, clairvoyance, and ‘co-walkers’.
This edition was issued in 1893 in a very limited edition by the London the London publisher David Nutt. It incorporates commentary by folklorist Andrew Lang.
Rebel Satori here presents a facsimile of the 1893 edition in hardback format.
Recent Arrivals
Rainbow Kipper
Tradition and contemporary art merge in this magnificent color-coded Kipper card set designed for fortune-telling with ease. Blending this modern setting with traditional situational cards creates a foundation for a 21st-century predictive read. Explore your day-to-day environment with the Rainbow Kipper and never be confused regarding what events will occur. Each of the 36 cards is described in the accompanying handbook, delving into people, movement, connectors, and cause and effect. This inventive journey follows the first color-coded 36-card Rainbow Kipper deck, created with the reader in mind to forge predictive accuracy at first glance. Clusters of color allow you to detect situations that will arise, without complex reading techniques, and make it simple for you to spot every area of importance in a read that will amaze your querents with accurate reads. Appropriate for all ages.
Zen Master’s Dance
Zen Master’s Dance makes some of Zen’s subtlest teaching deeply personal and freshly accessible.
Eihei Dogen—the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen Master of peerless depth and subtlety—heard the music of the universe that sounds as all events and places, people, things, and spaces. He experienced reality as a great dance moving through time, coming to life in the thoughts and acts of all beings. It is a most special dance, the dance that the whole of reality is dancing, with nothing left out. All beings are dancing, and reality is dancing as all beings.
In The Zen Master’s Dance, Jundo Cohen takes us deep into the mind of Master Dogen—and shows us how to join in the great and intimate dance of the universe. Through fresh translations and sparkling teaching, Cohen opens up for us a new way to read one of Buddhism’s most remarkable spiritual geniuses.