The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture. Frederick Glaysher. $9.99 - ePub
Hardcover. ISBN-13: 9780967042183. ISBN-10: 0967042186. Earthrise Press, 2007.  337 pages. eBook edition,  2010. ISBN 9780982677841. Non-DRM. Kindle


Frederick Glaysher invokes a global vision beyond the prevailing postmodern conceptions of life and literature that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture.

East and West meet in a new synthesis of a global vision of humankind ranging over classic literature, ancient and modern, both Western and non-Western, from the dilemmas of modernity in Yeats, Eliot, Milosz, Bellow, Dostoevsky, to Lu Xun, Ryuichi Tamura, Kenzaburo Oe, Naguib Mahfouz, R. K. Narayan, among others, from mimesis and deconstruction to the United Nations, with extensive essays on Chinese, Japanese, and South-Asian literature. 

Clearly the work of a poet-critic attempting to embrace a larger portion of human experience than the personal postmodern self, The Grove of the Eumenides reaches toward an epic vision of the twenty-first century. All the muck and glory of American and international experience and history mix in the complex tension of a mind struggling with itself and its age. Acutely perceptive of the spiritual and moral nuances of literature, criticism, and culture, Glaysher confronts the loss of religious faith in the modern world and breaks through to a vision of the unity of the human longing for transcendence.

“A poet now whose work and dedication to a demanding and difficult art I admire; a man who has the gift of inner grace.” —Robert Hayden

“Poet Frederick Glaysher in these essays comments on a variety of literary and social issues, ranging from the plays of Sophocles, and the major works of Japanese literature, to the loss of religion and spirituality in modern society and literature.” Essay and General Literature Index,” September 2007, H. W. Wilson Co. 

Kitty Jospe's review on Goodreads

Frederick Glaysher studied writing under a private tutorial, at the University of Michigan, with the poet Robert Hayden and edited both Hayden’s Collected Prose (University of Michigan Press) and his Collected Poems (Liveright). He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from U of M, the latter in English. At the college and university level, he taught American and non-Western literature, world religions, etc., for ten years. 

Mr. Glaysher lived for more than fifteen years outside Michigan—in Japan, where he taught at Gunma University in Maebashi; in Arizona, on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation, site of one of the largest internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII; in Illinois, on the central farmlands and on the Mississippi; ultimately returning to his suburban hometown of Rochester. He has been a Fulbright-Hays and NEA scholar on China and India and has traveled and studied throughout China.