Franciscan Notes

Franciscan Notes is a spot of the it offers a wide gamut of human spiritual experience, and carries us from approaching old age, and tragic loss, to grounds of hope. This book begins with the deaths of family, friends, and mentors, and explores living beyond deaths, as it first takes a pilgrimage to Japan and India. Inspired by his practice of Zen meditation, Alan Williamson forms his poems in deference to the great Rinzai Zen question, “If you cannot endure this moment, what can you endure?”―and writes with an awareness of all the public moment’s griefs and opportunities for growth. Williamson also takes us to Italy, to La Verna and Assisi, to dwell on encounters with old culture, which have the potential to encourage resignation and mysticism. Moods pass through these poems, which persist from the geniuses of two great Italian the nihilistic Leopardi and the tentatively mystical Montale. Gathering around his multiple experiences of lore and music, philosophy and science, Williamson creates an extended meditation on mental suffering. He gives us glimpses of the dynamic and double nature of our “skull / and beatific face,” with “the immortal recombinants of fire and water.”