SPIRIT GARDEN: POEMS

About the Book

On SPIRIT GARDEN:
“In Spirit Garden, poet-scholar-playwright Joe Martin sings ecstatically of the One, the hidden integrity of opposites & the living mystery of existence. He not only fuses Sufi, Buddhist & Jewish paths in a troubadour’s transcendence both timeless & time-bound, his thirty poems share the page with Enrique Castanon’s haunting figures which shift foreground and background to meta-illustrate the gestalt of Martin’s vision.”
—Kirpal Gordon, author, Giant Steps Press blog
On FOREIGNERS:
"[An] absurdist mind grenade... Joe Martin's first novel paints this neo-European shadow landscape with panache … a gifted American writer."
—Richard Peabody, Editor, Gargoyle
On RUMI’S MATHNAVI: A Stage Adaptation
“Absolutely remarkable and memorable … lifting the veils one after another.” —Lida Saeedian, co-translator of The Pocket Rumi
On PARABOLA: SHORTER FICTIONS
“...through the tightly structured geometry of this metaphorically rich [work is a] recognition of the search we undertake to fi x a place for ourselves … and try to make sense of a confusing, alienating and often combative world.” —Cheryl Pallant, High Performance

About the Author

JOE MARTIN is an award-winning author, playwright, and theatre director whose works comprise a continued exploration into the border regions between the spiritual cosmos and the political world. (He writes on spirituality and Sufi sm under the pen name Yousef Daoud.) Currently a Fellow in Arts and Peace at the Center for Peacebuilding and Development in Washington DC, he has worked in Romania as well as Jerusalem and the West Bank as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in theatre. He is a senior lecturer in Theatre Arts at Johns Hopkins University and teaches Creative Writing at George Washington University.