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Press Release for Into Light, Poems by Lee Underwood
Into Light
Poems By Lee Underwood
Published by Poetic Matrix Press
ISBN: 978-1-63649-698-6
Pages 154
Price $18.00
Lee Underwood’s new title Into Light is available now. It is a work clearly written in Love and with Love for a Woman, Love of Music and musicians and Love that is the heritage of this Life that we all are graced with.
Clarity
Are you ready
To meet a stillness
You have never known before?
Pristine quietude,
No names, no labels,
No streaming images, no words
Autumn leaves
Red, gold, yellow, orange,
Cool mist on cheeks,
A lone bird winging south…
Mind open,
Still and quiet,
Radiant and
Clear within;
Clear without…
Wordless spaciousness,
Seeing without language,
Direct perception
A vast and cloudless
Deep blue mind-sky
The Book
Nearly all of these poems were written in 2020, the year in which covid-19 moved from China, to Europe, to the United States–an amazing series of movements that changed our lives. Infections. Deaths. Face masks, distancing, personal isolation. Racial protests. Civic chaos. Global instability. The burdens were great, and still are–the lingering deleterious effects of Trump's corrupt administration and his non-functioning Senate. The Covid-19 pandemic. The plummeting economy. The horrideous psychological diminution of confidence, energy, will power, and creative courage throughout the land. Nevertheless, in spite of these and related burdens, the center of the human heart remains forever alive. We love, we care, we doubt, we fear. We scale the heights in our mind, sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, and always aspire to realize the best, the most hopeful, the most loving and empathic dimensions of ourselves. That is what most of these poems are about: the forever-shining jewel-center of the universal human heart.
–From the Introduction.
Author Bio
Lee Underwood’s poems have appeared in two published books: Timewinds, (Poetic Matrix Press 2011) and Diamondfire, (Outskirts Press, 2016), as well as in several journals, including "Light of Consciousness," "ZamBomba," and "In The Grove." Into Light is a series of higher Consciousness poems nearly all of which were written in 2020. During the late '60s and early '70s, Lee Underwood played lead guitar with singer/songwriter Tim Buckley on seven of the nine albums Buckley released while alive, including Happy Sad and Starsailor. Underwood also appeared on several posthumous Buckley CDs, notably Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 and Works In Progress. He toured America and Europe with Buckley for seven years, and in 2001 published a book entitled Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered (Backbeat; San Francisco). While living in Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s, Underwood wrote extensively about music and musicians. His articles, interviews and reviews appeared in dozens of periodicals, including DownBeat (West Coast Editor, 1975-1981), L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly, Rolling Stone, Pulse, Jazz Forum, L.A. Free Press, New Realities, Body/Mind/Spirit, New Age Journal, and many others.
Into Light is available through the author, Poetic Matrix Press, online at Bookshop.org, Amazon.com and at area bookstores. Review copies are available.
