Dustin Pickering

In Imitations of Love Poems, Dory Williams and Dustin Pickering offered the world an open view of their separate minds and affections. In this second collaboration, this duo offers more of what made their first book interactive and exciting. Between Williams's aphoristic prose poems and Pickering's terse but illumined visionary works, this collection will invite thought and discussion among poets and other literati. If you have not read the first collaboration, you should pick it up soon

In his Salt and Sorrow, Pickering laments the departure of the Muse. In her absence, he composed poems of self-doubt and Christian salvation. In this new collection, the Muse returns as the embodiment of Love. Love inspires all Being with goodness and beauty. Love flows through the veins of life and in this collection She is ever-present as a subtle reflection of oneself. Many of these poems were written during the Great Texas Freeze of 2021 as the power outage led to the poet's boredom. Other poems were written at different times of inspiration. These poems are heavily imbued with the beauty of life, 'amor fati, ' and truth as the ultimate concern of the poet. The return of the poet's Muse is celebrated throughout

With Love as the Muse, the poet struggles within eternal realms of question. His doubts fuel his love of Creation and he accepts the burden of the eternal recurrence. The mystery puzzles and defines him as he scrapes through all relevant philosophical trajectories. Finally he recognizes that the fruit of philosophy is rotting on its vine-metaphysics is dead These poems are dedicated to real people whose value to the poet is immeasurably without reconciliation to the world of appearance. This collection ponders and pontificates the age-old questions.

It is a rare occasion in the publishing industry to see a book that reflects two minds writing on separate planes about the same topics. Imitations of Love Poems is the heart and mind bared on the topics of love, religion, conscience, youth, life, and film. The poetry of Dory Williams opens the collection with a childlike vision of the world. God is seen as the perfect form of Love. Williams' use of language, irony, and common sense proverb leads the angels of our understanding into a world that is beautiful and tricky, but also wonderful and kind. She writes, "The rights of children are our rights." The seemingly buoyant style Williams introduces is the product of a cheerful mind often fraught with sadness and the love of man and God. Her worldview, expressed ironically with wit, is that romantic love is the highest state of love given by God. Dustin Pickering takes an alternate approach to the same questions. His tribute poems are dark and sophisticated, thick with allegory and grief. His poetic stance is one of darkness, of facing love in the winter. His approach to God is far less conventional; it is even mystical. He conveys a direct sense of whom or what God is while defining human nature in terms of its relation to truth. Truth becomes an icky concept with lines like: "Yet vain hopes are all I have held. / Her breasts so lush were vanity revealed." Pickering, in defining human nature, wants freedom from it. He hopes to be genuine and perfectly altruistic but the darker strain in human nature is impossible to overcome. This collection of verse by two disabled poets promises its reader an awakening in how disabled people survive in loneliness, difficulty, and dependence. As America takes interest in the plight of the disadvantaged, Imitations of Love Poems is an important collection to peruse with pleasure and sympathy. Love, in its universality, is also stunningly individual in its expression.

*Knows No End* is both a narrative and a history of artistic conquest. In following a painter through all four seasons, we are brought into a philosophical world of constant change, despair, striving, and dream. The painter seeks the eternal truth through her visionary artwork as she paints the legendary hyacinth flower. The story unravels her sacrifice as it becomes futile in evolution. We learn with her that beauty and eternity are one together, and seeking higher truths is an abundant approach to resolving the problem of flux.

Alien Buddha releases this fine collection of ekphrastic poetry based on the art and photography of Red Focks Imagine a world where all images are transformed into words and ideas Imagine that world, and get a glimpse of it in Frenetic/No Contest. Freneticism is the title given to Pickering's art by himself. The cover image is a pastel painting by Dustin Pickering called "ANYTHING THE EYE COVETS, LET THE HAND GRASP".

Harbinger Asylum is a Houston-based magazine for literature and the arts. It is internationally known, and has published poets from Egypt, Canada, Greece, and many states in the USA. Cover designed and painted by Chad Sorg.