This tape was not like other relaxation tapes, at least for me. When I listened to it, I was put into such a state of awareness that the exercises in visualization made me cry. You may think that sounds crazy, and I guess it is. But, the "world" that it put me into is one that felt real enough to touch. So, I would recommend this tape to anyone, as crazy as this review may sound. Get the tape. As a spirit on this Earth, you need it.

This one is great. I love it, and so does my family. We enjoy the sweet monotone of the author as she leads you through the woods, around the streams, etc. The music behind her is especially soothing. I have used it many times to calm babies and put myself to sleep as I suffer from insomnia. I dont think anyone would be disappointed in this purchase, although I dont think I would recommend the second tape as it just didnt have the same effect. If you were to only have 1 meditation tape, this would be the one to have.
I have been using this recording in one form or another for several years. Our latest form has been audible.com which I would recommend as well...check it out!

This was the first book/tape I purchased on meditation, and having purchased numerous others since, I keep coming back to this one and wish it were available on CD. It contains 4 15-minute meditations, each building on the one before it, and all are incredibly relaxing, and great for beginners as well as the advanced. Salle Merrill Redfield's voice is very soothing, as are the simple, comforting images she presents. Wonderful after a stress-filled day at work or when trying to relax before bedtime. I would highly recommend The Joy of Meditating to anyone interested in meditation and easing away tension in their life.

I purchased this book about a year ago, and I have now read it pretty-much cover-to-cover. It is an excellent book. What I have found is that there are very few books on the market that cater to the individual who wants to build a microcomputer, starting from square one. This book caters to that market. If you are trying to build a Motorola 68000 system "from scratch", this book is for you. Be aware that there are a few pieces of information in the book that seem to be out of date. For instance, in the "working system" Mr. Antonakos describes how to build, he recommends an easier-to-use version of a UART that was apparently meant for the old Motorola 6800. The serial communications chip he recommends is now obsolete. However, as I have plowed my way through the morass of parts sellers and other charlatans, I have found that MANY parts are obsolete, even ones listed in the current catalogs of some of the biggest, most reputable IC distributors. Antonakos cannot be blamed for that. If you are interested in "building from scratch" with a Motorola 68000, also be aware of another data point : the 68000 seems to have an obituary written on it. My nose tells me Motorola is going to pull the carpet out from under it, maybe soon, or maybe not for another couple of years. In any case, it doesn't seem like the 68000 is going to be around for long. If you want to do it (build your own 68000 system), get this book and do it now !

This is a very good introduction about the 68000 from a pratical point of view,both at the assembly language level and at the hardware level.Only bad point is the accluded diskette which i found very tricky to use.The style of exposition of mr Antonakos is outstanding and very easy to follow.A great introduction to the 68000.

"Remember," wrote the British art critic John Ruskin in 1853, "that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance." When a peacock unfolds its plumage, the eyespots on its feathers form exact logarithmic spirals, like those in a daisy, a pinecone, and a sunflower. Twenty years later, Ruskin's remark inspired the Aesthetic Movement ("Art for art's sake"), of which the chief proponents were the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the American painter James A.M. Whistler. Wilde sometimes wore a sunflower in his lapel; and Whistler, as is documented in this thoroughly researched and richly illustrated volume (with 250 illustrations, nearly half in color), created an opulent dining room for London businessman Frederick Leyland, with peacocks as the main motif. Completed amid controversy in 1877, Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room was dismantled and sold after Leyland's death, and, in 1923, reconstructed in the U.S. at the Freer Gallery of Art, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains on view. A key event in design history, it was restored physically in 1989 through 1992; and now this book restores it historically, thereby "dispelling some of the myths and misconceptions that had settled over the story like mantles of aging varnish." As a cultural biography, the book's greatest virtue is its breadth of focus: Just as Whistler's interior served as an elaborate setting for Leyland's Chinese porcelain collection, Merrill provides a rich wide factual setting for the Peacock Room. (Copyright © by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14 No. 3, Spring 1999.)

This is an erudite investigation into the life styles of both Whistler and his patron Frederick Richards Leyland. Whilst being essentially an art book, it deals with its subject matter in a lively mannner which could well form the basis of a movie script.

ANOTHER LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS is a monograph of paintings, both finished and in preparatory sketches, each oil on canvas and rather large in size, that are gathered and presented with the titles assigned to each painting by poet friends of the painter. Dorothea Tannning has created twelve elegant and dreamy blossoms and pairs each painting with a poetic response by some of our most gifted poets today - James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery among them. The result is a beautiful little book that speaks quietly to our sense of beauty. Here is a treasure book to not only add to your bedside stand to close the day with sweetness, but here is also that 'book for someone special' that is ever on the list for readers and art lovers alike. Highly recommended.

Another gem from the Dalkey publishing house, this exploration of creativity reads beautifully. For the most part, it succeeds both as literary experiment and as narrative. Author James Merrill is a poet, and his imagery and poetic structure are the major attraction of this "book within a book."

Merrill's protagonist, Sandy, struggles with a novel he's writing about his family and their experiences on the Greek island of "Diblos." Merrill's conceit is that his (Merrill's) book is really the notebook of author "Sandy." There are two types of entries in this notebook: Sandy's draft of a novel, complete with edits, restarts, notes to himself, etc., and Sandy's journal about his "real life" and people and experiences from which he derives much of his novel.

I won't be giving away too much by providing a brief key to the names of characters in Sandy's novel and their counterparts Sandy's life. "Orestes" is the draft novel 's name for Orson, Sandy's half-brother. "Dora" (the older woman unnamed at the start of Sandy's novel), Orestes' friend and lover, is based on Dora, friend and lover of Orson on Diblos who later accompanies him to New York City. "Sandy" remains unnamed in the novel, but is Orestes' half-brother. "Arthur Orson" is Orson's godfather; his place in the novel is not yet resolved.

"The (Diblos) Notebook" is not as confusing as it may sound, and the writing is evocative and beautifully impressionistic: "The islands of Greece Across vivid water the islands of Greece lie. They have been cut out of cardboard and set on bases of at subtle odds with one another, upon bases of pale haze. Their colors are mauve, exhausted blue, tanned rose, here and there crinkled to catch the light. They do not seem It is inconceivable that they are of one substance with the warm red rock underfoot"

These fits and starts are especially prevalent in the beginning of Merrill's book, and (as he notes in his 1994 afterword) are his attempt to show that, contrary to the notions of some Beat writers, the first creative impulse is not always the best. Sometimes revision improves writing. What I found just as interesting, though, were the sentences in which the original sounded truer, as if the revisions were trying to hide certain emotions. The editing device, with the fragments that resemble poetry and the hints at repression get somewhat tiring after awhile, and Merrill focuses more on straightforward narrative in the well-paced second half. His presentations of brilliant, vain Orson, insightful but isolated Sandy, and the contrasts between Greece and New York read easily and are as insightful as the more overtly psychological revisions. It's an interesting book, rich with such pleasures. At times the book is challenging, and Merrill perhaps overplays his "experiment," but it's also one of those books that reveals more pleasures with each rereading (whether of the whole book or just sections). This book was well received by the critics; it was a final nominee for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1965. Definitely recommended.

Yes, this book is out of print and I found it secondhand. Don't hesitate to buy it should you see it. Written in 1968 but especialy timely 30 years on. There are many "Bishop Pikes" in the world today, fiercely clinging to their title of bishop while vehemently denying Christ Jesus at every turn. The case of Bishop Pike is a sad one certainly but not one to be sympathized with. Unger gives a thorough overview of the Bishop's beliefs (or rather, lack thereof) and his rapid decline into the occult. The Word of God regarding the occult is made extremely clear in the closing chapters of this book.

Of special note is 'The Image Maker', as well as the longish poem 'Losing the marbles'; both are amazing and peculiar. Merrill is often at his best in this collection - a must for his fans.

Thomas Bolt's collection of poems is intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying; a journey through a landscape equally literal and metaphorical, rooted in nature and imagination. There is honesty in his keen vision of an unromanticized South, and yet the images linger and shift in the reader's mind with the force of myth.

"Eight American Poets," edited by Joel Conarroe, is a fine anthology. The introduction notes that this book was "designed as a companion volume to 'Six American Poets,'" also edited by Conarroe. "Eight" follows the same plan as "Six": rather than anthologize a huge company of poets who are represented by only a few pieces each, each of Conarroe's books focuses on a relatively small group of poets, each of whom is represented by a substantial selection. Conarroe's approach allows the reader to get a fuller feel of each poet in the anthology format.

The poets of "Eight" are Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsburg, and James Merrill. Each poet's work is prefaced by a substantial individual introduction.

There are many masterpieces in this book. Curiously, I found the most compelling poems to be those that focus on nature: Roethke's "The Meadow Mouse," Bishop's "The Fish," Plath's "Mushrooms," and Merrill's "The Octopus." Poems like these combine skillfully used language with keen insight, and reveal these poets to be true heirs of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (two of the featured artists in "Six American Poets").

Overall, I felt that "Eight" was not as strong as its sister volume, "Six." Although there are many poetic masterpieces in "Eight," there is also much material which, in my opinion, hasn't aged well. The so-called "confessional poetry" of some of these writers strikes me as overwrought. Some of the longer poems failed to resonate with me. I was particularly disappointed by Berryman's "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet," especially since I am an admirer of Anne Bradtreet's own work. Admittedly, this criticism may merely reflect my own personal tastes, but I submit it for the reader's consideration.

The fact that so many of these poets either wrote about each other, or pop up in the editor's introductions to each others' work, sometimes gives the book as a whole a creepy, incestuous feel. And the fact that so many of these poets committed suicide, had long-term mental health problems, and/or suffered from addictions further gives the book as a whole a rather morbid feel. On second thought, maybe this group of eight is a bit problematic!

Still, editor Conarroe has assembled an impressive anthology that I would recommend for students and teachers, as well as to a general readership. Although a mixed bag, "Eight American Poets" contains some truly enduring work by an octet whose legacy is secure.

.........the best known and loved poetry of eight well-known twentieth century American poets. Includes well known poems such as Bishop's "The Fish", Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz", Berryman's "Dream Songs", Merrill's "Lost in Translation", Sexton's "Ringing the Bells", and many others.

Like Conarroe's "Six American Poets", the anthology introduces us to each poet with a short biography that is presented before the poet's work. We learn about their lives and come to understand some of the primary forces that have shaped their poetry. I have found that this greatly enriches the experience of reading poetry because I better see the struggles that lead to each individual creation. After each collection, Conarroe offers a list of books and anthologies where each poet has been published so that we, should we wish, can come to know the work of a given poet much better.

This anthology is a wonderful starting place for someone who, like me, desires an introduction to some of the greatest American poetry ever produced. Personally, I feel, after reading this anthology that I have come to truly appreciate the work of Elizabeth Bishop and Theodore Roethke, in particular. I had never known their work well, but suddenly each jumped off the page at me, Bishop for her wonderfully vivid descriptions and Roethke for his intensely moving subjects. Plath and Sexton also really spoke to me, their work so reflecting their lives. Overall, this anthology is superbly worthwhile reading!

Ah, a fine comparison and contrast in studies on the eight best American confessional poets ever. Kudos to the editor on a fine choice of poems, and candid biographies on each poet. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop and the other guy, here's to you.

After checking out Divine Comedies at the library and reading a few chapters of The Book of Ephraim, I knew I was willing to read the entire epic of The Changing Light at Sandover. Nearly six months later, after having read and reread Ephraim, Mirabell, Scripts and the Coda (the four sections of Merrill's magnum opus) I am ready to pass judgement. This epic is great but probably not GREAT. It requires a very heavy investment from the reader, not unlike Dante's Divine Comedy, or Joyce's later work. This investment pays dividends, but not the astronomical sort that one hopes when one is flipping through an opera dictionary, trying to discover Merrill's point.

Sandover is full of allusions, contradictions, and virtoso poetry, the latter being why I highly recommend it. As the other reviews tell you here, Merrill, elitist that he is, has not made the work accessible. Which is fine. So here is my short list of writers to be familiar with before you read it: Dante, Homer, Auden, Pound, Eliot, Proust, Wagner, Merrill's earlier work, Blake and Yeats. I also highly recommend Robert Polito's A Reader's Guide to The Changing Light at Sandover, which is more of a handy index followed by a compilation of reviews (including Bloom's and Vendler's) than say, a line-by-line explication of the sort available for Pound's Cantos. Thankfully, The Changing Light at Sandover does not require that.

The Book of Ephraim stands alone and whether you like it will probably be the best gauge of whether you will like the whole of Sandover. Mirabell I found very difficult going and, in all honesty can probably be skipped, like most people skip Purgatorio. Scripts for the Pageant is much more fun and The Higher Keys is really of a piece with it, tying up the loose threads. For all my pessimism, this really is the best modern epic I've found, a thousand times better than The Waste Land or Blake's prophetic works, or even Milton's Paradise Lost. The poetry and storytelling are so overwhelmingly confident that, once you have assimilated the scattered references, it is easy to get carried away. Large questions of free will, life after death and the nature of love are tackled with wit and sincerity. I'm glad I bought it and have it on my bookshelf. Since I put in the sweat, it is now a treasure-box I can open at any time.

The Changing Light at Sandover is Merrill's magnum opus. It is also the greatest example of epic poetry in modern literature. Divided into four sections (four being a mystical number [seasons, elements, etc] and possibly alluding also to Eliot's "Four Quartets"), Sandover, is, as far as I am aware, the longest single poem in the modern cannon. Yet length alone is not what qualifies this as an epic poem. Like all true epic poetry, it borrows heavily from its classical predecessors, so Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton and even Tasso are alluded to throughout the poem.

The method behind the poem is fairly well known, and is in fact included in the poem's narrative. Merrill and his life-partner, David Jackson, would ritualistically cleanse themselves for a stipulated period, then consult the spirit-world by means of an Ouija Board. Merrill served as a kind of amanuensis, taking dictation from spirits from another dimension and translating the messages into poetry.

Merrill has been branded as an elitist by some, and there is no getting around the fact that he did consider himself and his partner as members of an order higher than that of most of mankind. He believed in a quasi-Gnostic hierarchy, wherein human beings are ranked according to their spiritual development. Unfortunately, the belief system he invokes leans more closely to Third Reich mysticism than to Buddhism or Hinduism. A great many people, according to Merrill's tenets, don't even have souls. They exist only on an animal level. One can see where this sort of thinking can, and has led.

I don't want to infer, however, that Merrill, or this work, are in any manner political or polemical. This is a true work of art, full of imagination and of ideas. The sheer scope of creativity on display in "Sandhurst" is unsurpassed in the past 100 years of poetry, with the possible exception of "The Waste Land." It should be read and studied (and hopefully, cherished) by all lovers of literature. Whether or not Merrill existed on a higher plane than most of us is certainly debatable, even questionable. Whether or not his excursions into other spiritual realms were "real" or were delusional is also debatable. What is not debatable, is the fact that he produced a remarkable and very important poem in the process.

How can I start a review of the book that captured me into poetry? that led me to actually read and enjoy Dante and Milton? that even led me to reading odd epic poems and novels in verse that rarely make it into the top million rank here on Amazon?

How about "Great book - a life-changer in wholly unexpected ways."

I got my copy gratis back when I was doing occasional book reviews of the more traditional sort and not the slightest bit interested in the slender wisps of poetry that crossed my desk. There was something different about this one, though. This was five pounds of poetry ! Five-hundred and sixty pages ? One poem? How could that be? WHAT could that be?

But you've got to decide whether to spend a few bucks here, your situation is different. So the real question is what brought YOU to this page in Amazon. Needless to say, my five-star rating means that I will try to convince all comers to read "Sandover", but you must realize that you are a rather lonely explorer to have come this far. Your path reveals the nature of your search.

Maybe you've read some of Merrill's other work from the recent, rather successful "Collected Poems". Wonderful! While the critics can tell you about commonalties in all those poems, you probably noticed more of the vast range in that collection: from the tiny, surgically incisive "Little Fallacy", to the weirdly evocative "Lost in Translation" (bet you read that one more than once), to the extended, languorous narrative of "The Summer People", to the challenging and often enigmatic mythos in "From the Cupola."

This wholly different last pair, my favorites, were unexpectedly conjoined as the only two poems in the UK-published early book entitled "Two Poems." Together, they hint best at what "Sandover" will deliver: carefully crafted narrative and delight in poetic form along with intellectually challenging and sometimes cryptic layering. Expect some strangeness wrapped in a reassuring pale, cream cape, until the cape is tossed back to reveal a startlingly, spookily omni-dimensional vision. Sounds like fun ? Jump in...

I guess it's possible that you came here after reading Alison Lurie's recent lurid little "literary memoir." If so, congratulations for stepping over that indelicate little pile to consider the man's most epic work, instead of a shrewish listing of his peccadilloes. Of course personality and autobiography inevitably fuel poetry, and Merrill's "Sandover" is no exception. You might even, legitimately wonder, as I did, how the poetry of a rich gay man, who sounds suspiciously like an aesthete of the flightiest sort in Lurie (and apparently had a weird, mystic streak) can do anything more than entertain you. And how is that possible for 560 pages ?

You won't find the glib and thoughtless dilettante of Lurie's portrayal lurking beneath "Sandover." Merrill was not an overtly autobiographical poet, but he collected the pieces and wrote the tale of Sandover through 20-odd years of his life, In doing so he revealed the reality of privilege without arrogance, mysticism within a wry skepticism, and appreciation of love and beauty in all their forms. "Sandover" is actually a fine place for one who is neither gay, nor rich, nor mystical and, perhaps, like me, aesthetically-challenged, to get drawn-in to a world that twines these elements together in an endlessly interesting and attractive way. If you've read Lurie, I think you will find "Sandover" an especial pleasure - a much more graciously framed journey toward much more extraordinary horizons.

I suppose you might be here because you have developed a taste for the long poem: the epic or the novel in verse (maybe from my own 'listmania' list of such works right here on Amazon). If so, you face a more interesting challenge. "Sandover" will offer many things that are familiar but probably some quite different. If the story in Vikram Seth's "Golden Gate" captivated you, you will find a quite compelling story here - but not one quite so down-to-earth. If the different cultures circumscribed by Walcott's "Omeros" or even Budbill's "Judevine" intrigued you, you will find other worlds here - otherworldly locales, indeed.. If Merwin's "Folding Cliffs" satisfied while it challenged you as a reader, you will find "Sandover" to be a surprising combination of the eminently readable and the multi-layered and re-readable. If Dante's, Milton's or even Frederick Turner's epic reach inspired you, you can count on "Sandover" to take you to the inner and outer reaches of the universe.

Finally, of course, you might be here just because you've heard that James Merrill was one of the finest poets of the 20th century. He was. In "Sandover" he combined many, many talents - as a formalist and as an experimenter in form and as one of the last poets to show a pure delight in words and their infective enlodgement in the human brain. The atomics of the poem satisfy and surprise no matter what magnification your readerly microscope is set on. Over and over you will find yourself startled at a just plain perfect piece of short verse - as tersely powerful as William's "red wheelbarrow." Then you will find yourself so captured by the narrative of the story, that only part-way through will you realize that you are in the midst of two pages of elegant "terza rima." Even the largest structural elements partition, loop-back and break off in ways that build a magnificent whole that is as captivating in its large-scale structure as in its single word choices.

Sandover is an endlessly captivating work - I've read it, all 560 pages, four times in ten years, and still pick it up and read a section or two every few months.