Global Scholarly Publications

Your Shopping Cart




Your Cart is currently empty.
   

You are here: Home Shop Now Books Literature Light First, Light Last
Decrease font size  Default font size  Increase font size 
Info: Your browser does not accept cookies. To put products into your cart and purchase them you need to enable cookies.
PDFPrintE-mail
Life Looking Death in the Eye: The Iraqi War as Experienced by a U.S. Army ContractorLooking to the Future

Light First, Light Last
View Full-Size Image

Light First, Light Last

ISBN: 9781592671151
Author: Q.R. Quasar
Price: $ 9.95

Ask a question about this product

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:none; mso-hyphenate:none; text-autospace:ideograph-other; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Light First, Light Last (LF, LL) highlights the position taken by the Iranian prophet and painter, Mani (d. 278 C.E.), that light is the preponderant and sovereign force of the Universe. LF, LL takes off from this position. LF, LL expresses light as an independent force though it has a symbiotic relationship with conscious organisms. This dual essence--that light is both independent and parasitically symbiotic (see below)--is one of the central mysteries explored both in LF, LL and OOS. As conscious beings, we gravitate to light despite all of the other gravitational forces. Light is a parasite and virus and thereby depends upon living organisms as hosts, bases/stations, and propagating points for its web-weave flooding/infusing grafts onto/into darkness. Light transfuses and transforms darkness. Just as darkness is substance, light is both force and substance. Radiance builds up to threshold levels and transmutes what it infuses in sudden "phase changes." Suffice it to say that if something as vital and floodingly splayful as radiance could be adequately explained or even just hinted at in prose, there would be no need to attempt to embody its genetic code in poetry. Hence: this poetry. This poetry is not just a description, it is an active propagation of light's substance in code. Of course, gratitude.

Q.R. Quasar is a poet, scholar, and translator of Arabic and Persian poetry and philosophy.  He earned a Ph.D. degree from UCLA in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures with a concentration in Sufism (Islamic mysticism).  He has lived in Japan, Myanmar (Burma), India, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.
Besides publishing “I, Universe:” The Great Time-Heart Speaks and The Archangel of Radiance (both via Global Scholarly Publications [GSP], New York, 2010), he has translated two full-length books of Persian poetry into English:  The Expanse of Green by Sohrab Sepehry (UNESCO/Kalimat in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, Persian Series; awarded a Columbia University Translation Prize) and A Rebirth, by Forough Farrokhzad (Mazda), the masterpiece of the premier feminist poet of Iran.  The former contains Water's Footsteps, a separate book by Sepehry, as an appendix.  The latter includes—also as an appendix--”Let's Bring Faith to the Onset of the Cold Season,” Farrokhzad's great and mysterious elegy, the title poem of her last, and unfinished, book.  Q.R. Quasar was awarded “The International Scholar of the Year” award for his translations of poetry from Persian. He has  published and presented numerous  articles on Mideastern Poetry and Philosophy.
Prospective books of poetry by Q.R. Quasar to be published by GSP (www.gsp-online.org) are Ocean of Suns along with Light First, Light Last; and Watching the Universe Die along with The Universe in Bloom (both double books), Buddha Time, and Void.  Other books in the “pipeline” are The Archangel Commands Your Rapture (stories), Angel in the Divine Zone (poems), and Huitzilopochtli:  The Aztec Book of Light (poems).
Q.R. Quasar directed, and was principal writer/composer for, Shiva Poetry Theater (SPT) which won First Prize in the Chicago Poetry Festival.  SPT'S poems are composed for two, three, and four voices.  He has read his own poetry, as well as Persian poetry and his English translations thereof, on international Persian Language television (Rangarang) for broadcast in North America, Europe, and Asia.
One of his works in progress is a series of translations from Classical Persian Poetry on the search by Alexander the Great and the Prophet Khizr (also, in one version, by the Prophet Elijah) as related by the poets Firdausi , Nizami. and the Sufi, Suhrawardi al-Maqtul.  The work is entitled, The Search for the Water of Life in the Land of Darkness.  Other works in progress are translations and studies of the mystical poetry of the classical Persian poet 'Attar of Nayshabur.  
Q.R. Quasar's translation from Persian of the Ruba'iyat of the late Persian poet Ghogha Khal'atbari should soon be in print.
Finally, a work envisioned, but still in an embryonic stage, is an historical novel covering the lives and times of Nezahualcoyotl  (“Hungry Coyote”) and his son Nezahaulpili, two kings and sorcerer-poets of Texcoco, (one of the three city-states of the Triple Alliance--better known as the Aztec or Mexica Empire) ca. 1420-1519.  The novel would explore the problems of justice and statecraft in an environment of increasing human sacrifice on the part of the Mexica proper (of Tenochtitlan, the dominant city of the Triple Alliance) while the “Nezahual” kings of Texcoco were creating and pursuing a spiritual revolution including the abolition of human sacrifice.
Availability

Usually ships in:

The book will be available by February 15, 2011

Customer Reviews:

There are yet no reviews for this product.
Please log in to write a review.