Preface to "The Minaret."

Preface

The present poem dates back to the months following the end of my protracted undergraduate education. During this time I had lived with Eric Brooks, and we had quickly become spiritual fell0w-travelers in the way young people will always become fellow-travelers. We also struggled together to find the means to constitute a brilliant new literary movement, and meanwhile had many adventures I would not have credited before the fact.

In the hope of somehow launching a program to build a literature, the terrible task we had set ourselves, I wrote The Minaret over about four years. For some time prior to this period I had been powerfully impressed by the passage of life in time and of the episodes in the world's and my own daylong life, and the possible meanings of all this as against my own and the world's hopes, visions, divisions and attachments. In beginning this poem I hoped to wed these stirrings and impressions with my own growing desire to unfold an ambitious new work that would serve for my own quizzical words to the world, even if I failed to produce anything else afterward. Beyond this smaller desire, though, I hoped to also produce something that would advance the "cause" and jostle itself into the current epoch of letters like a new and strangely formed animal. At that time I already had a rough idea of how the thing would go, but in the succeeding seasons and years I only infrequently returned to The Minaret with new ideas for a passage or a whole "canto." Of the nine pieces with their Roman numerals that make up the poem, the first two are older than the next two by more time than I'm happy to say, and so on to number IX. I made difficult progress, insisting I'd carry through this work while doubting I'd ever have the ideas that would move it along.

The image of the minaret first arose from my memory of a structure built by the Liechtenstein family on one of their former estates in the present-day Czech Republic. At the time I was studying field archaeology in Moravia. This "minaret" is a central feature of the sprawling castle gardens at Lednice. Of course it is not a "working" minaret, and was never part of the religious life of any community. Having set down this testimony I would like to also clarify that while the tower in my poem points heavenward, I do not intend for the image of this minaret to sally forth and establish an apologetic or polemical position. There is in this poem no discussion of the differences between the world's great religions, or of questions of religious experience or practice, of the ill-used "way(s) to God," or of the destiny of social and civilisational history, and nor do I express here my own views on the vexed questions that have come down to us. I have likely kept all this too far out of mind while slowly adding to the poem in recent years.

We read that we are each to work out our own salvation with "fear and trembling," and my present poem is largely about the "fear and trembling" that precede the fear and trembling of this verse. It is also at pains to make sense in verse of a number of personal impressions and memories, with reference to some favorite haunts in my own reading. Naturally these "cantos" found their own themes and preoccupations, their own diction and imagery, over time, so that I'm about to back off from the labyrinth-in-an-otherworld that grew up around the poem, and can only hope that something true and real catches your eye in its windings.

-Sean (Patrick) Kater

Updates

I apologize for not having updated this blog for so long. We have been doing a lot of practical work getting things ready to print our first books. I also found out near the end of January that my wife is pregnant. Busy times, but Gravitas Press has been coming together.

We obviously have not kept to our original deadlines, but the business has gone through more of an organic development through discussions between myself and other writers/contributors/friends. We're getting close now to publishing our first books, and I already have some shorter essays prepared that will be published as pamphlets.

Here's what's happened: we are (both for cost reasons, and because we promote decentralized economies) trying to keep production in house as much as possible. We recently purchased a large high-powered laser printer, which will more than match our presently low demand. The binding will be done by hand on wooden binding rigs-- actually the same process by which most perfect-bound paper backs are put together, except it's not automated. This is cost effective, allows us direct control over our product, and allows us to do on-demand printing. In the next week we will be getting a laminator to increase the durability of our covers. Thus these books will be "perfect bound," meaning a folded cover glued to the spine as is seen on most paper backs. Some of the shorter works may simply appear as staple bound pamphlets.

We have two books which are nearing completion:

The Minaret by Sean Kater. This medium length narrative poem weaves American Indian Folklore and classical mythology together with the author's own experiences. The poem is all written, so now it just needs some editing, an introduction, footnotes, and then we'll print it.

My first book, Poetry Against the World, is also nearing completion. This book contains an essay on the nature of poetry as vocation (rather than as hobby, art, diversion, field of study, etc.), followed by a collection of my recent poems.

My longer work The Legend of St George will still take some time to complete, but I'm hoping to have it finished by the time my child is born in late September. It's developing nicely, but also slowly as I have given a lot of time to other shorter works along the way.

I also have a number of essays that are ready to print as pamphlets. I'll give the topics rather than the titles: one takes a philosophical approach to environmentalism, arguing that a appraoch that does not involve a clear philosophical conception of human nature and our relation to the natural order may be able to counter certain problems of environmental destruction but cannot offer an alternative ideal of what constitutes a normal or healthy relationship between humans/civilization and nature. Next, I have an essay giving the basic philosophical arguments in favor of local economies, against both the centralization of private corporations and public institutions. I also have a dialogue defending metaphysics as a legitimate field of study. This dialogue is fairly non-technical, and straightforwardly answers many of the claims of various modern schools of thought which have made claims about the "impossibility of metaphysics," or even the "death of philosophy." These three works are implicitly based on principles from Catholic philosophy, but are written in an open "common sense" manner so to appeal to a broader audience. Lastly, I have a work on Christianity and Buddhism in which I demonstrate how the Buddha's refusal to discuss the origin of the world in the Four Nikayas (the earliest Buddhist texts in existence) are ultimately the foundation for all the other more subtle distinctions between Buddhism and Christianity, and explain why a Buddhist who already admits an "unconditioned" reality (to use the term of the Buddha himself) should also admit the doctrine of creation and all that comes with it. These four shorter works need a little bit more editing, but they're basically ready now if anyone is intereted in them.

If everything continues at the pace it's going now, those two books of poetry should be available within a few weeks. Sooner or later we'll have to set up a paypal account, but just keep it personal and email me if you're interested in any of the above. Now that things are getting rolling, this blog will hopefully be updated more often.

First post

Hopefully there will be a lot of posts.

The blog is named after a student group that existed in a small college in 2006. The contributors to this blog were founding members of this group, who were at that time briefly attending the same school. When Eric Brooks and I launched the organization with the name "Gravitas" we meant that we were launching a "study / discussion" group that would make forays into depths and vastnesses including the comparative religious and metaphysical, in a way that ranged widely over world history. I think now that we were trying to constitute a self-contained "curriculum" that we would build up, as a small group of students, as we went along, hopefully gaining lasting insight while sharing studies and discussions in one tradition at a time. As "Gravitas" developed and more students became regular participants we were all enabled to sound these "gravities" more deeply and broadly.
I have beautiful memories of the group's sessions, many of which took place in the pleasant outdoor setting of the school's grounds, into mid-spring. Someone would begin each session by introducing a text, often a sacred text, and then its history, the tradition in its background, and of course its contents. People I hardly knew would soon be sharing with me the pearls of their own quiet strivings in a way uncommon in the general run of things. In fact, for me and other participants this was the last semester before graduation, and I was sorry to leave off a project that had been so consistently successful and rewarding, and wished that it could have gone on longer, that it could have started earlier.

What we intend for this blog now is not exactly to continue the efforts of the old "Gravitas," but for all that this project basically descends from our fellow-travelling in 2006. Eric has already explained what my first contributions here will be. I hope that these will engage readers and speak to some of their "graver" spritual soundings and stirrings like the old group could do, and I hope that many will be moved to follow these posts and publications as friends and fellow-travellers towards truth in its depth and vastness.

Welcome to our blog!

Greetings!
This is the official blog of Gravitas Press.
We are a new small press dedicated to printing novels, essays, short stories, and poetry combating modernism and promoting traditional philosophy and ethics. This blog is for our authors to provide information about upcoming books, thoughts, reflections, answer questions, or anything else.

You can visit our official website at http://sites.google.com/a/gravitaspress.com/gravitas to learn about our upcoming publications. Online ordering will become available sometime in November.

This business is just getting off the ground, but we will have several books and pamphlets available in upcoming months.

Near mid-December we will be releasing three booklets/pamphlets:

1. A defense of metaphysical enquiry by Eric Brooks. This short reflection, written in an easy to understand question-and-answer form, defends the study of philosophical metaphysics against various skeptical arguments. Leaving aside theological questions, metaphysics is defended as a legitimate branch of natural knowledge within the grasp of all people by virtue of the same intellect that allows us to pursue math and science. An excellent primer for someone just beginning to look into these questions, or a good way to invite materialists into reasonable even-handed discussion.
2. A reflection on the decline of the West by Chris Taylor, summarizing in brief but penetrating words the political, moral, esthetic, and spiritual decline of modern civilization.
3. A criticism of violence in modern horror movies, by Sean Kater. This booklet bypasses the silly statistical questions about the effects of media violence on children, and instead cuts right to the moral and philosophical heart of the question. Drawing on a wealth of knowledge of classical and medieval literature, Mr. Kater differentiates several forms of graphic violence. Thus he is able to avoid any blanket condemnation of violent stories in general, praising the virtues of some, but ultimately showing the total corruption of violence in horror movies.

In February 2010 we will be bringing you our first two full-length books:

1. The Legend of St George by Eric Brooks. The simple and iconic legend of St George the dragon slayer is retold as a 'return of the king' myth. The knight and martyr miraculously marches again, toppling our civilization and establishing a bizarre and fairy-like new Christendom. George's triumph is told by a variety of voices from the new civilization including poets, essayists, and storytellers from the oral tradition.
2. The Minaret and Other Poems by Sean Kater and Eric Brooks. The Minaret is Sean Kater's long-in-the-making narrative poem about a journey through a labyrinth of strange dangers and self-doubts, all moving toward an ever-distant tower at the center of both the inner and outer landscape of the poem. Also included are short poems by both authors treating subjects legendary and philosophical, as well as a preface discussing the nature and importance of poetry.

We hope to have you along as friends and readers. In addition to these print publications, this blog should be updated several times a week.