My New Writing, and What Three Books I'm Publishing in 2025

Three books in 2025? How to become a great author? And other quesitons answered.

Hey everyone, here are some new poems, translations, commentary, and a FAQ from my upcoming collections. I haven’t spoken much about my forthcoming books, but here is their status!

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Book Update

There is a 100% chance Desert Orpheus comes out this summer

There is a 100% chance my Warm Mountain collection will come out sometime this year

and there is a good chance of a new collection I haven’t spoken about titled

Mystical Poets of the Spanish Modernist Era (1880–1930)

is coming out sometime this year or early next year. Below is an explanation of all the collections and some new pieces from them!

Each collection will feature my original poetry and translations of transformative poetry that can change your life.

Desert Orpheus

Desert Orpheus reimagines the ancient Orphic myth and Greek Mythology through the hallucinatory and desolate lens of the desert. Dozens of poems from the collection have already been posted on Substack, and I plan to release some more before the launch in late summer. In the book, there should be around 50 original poems.

The collection will also feature translations of many of the Orphic Hymns

and a complete translation of Rainer Marie Rilke’s 55 poems in Sonnets to Orpheus.

In all my translations, I try to enhance the mystical images of the poem, which are often lost in translations done by academics in the ivory tower.

I also change the setting of all the translations to the Desert.

Below is one of the best translations of Sonnets to Orpheus I’ve done.

Robert Bly said this poem alone contains five years of wisdom and ideas for creative writing students to grapple with and use.

I would read the poem now (it is below) and come back to this analysis!

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As artists, many of us view the Orphic impulse as pure creativity. However, we aren’t Orpheus. We can tap into the artist archetype, but Desert Orpheus isn’t about creativity.

It’s about listening.

Orpheus gave us the gift of listening. He built us a temple deep inside our ears.

To be the best writer in the world, you must first become the best listener.

The poem asks us to understand that listening is a road. In our technological and suburban world, many of us have lost the ability or never learned to see and hear as Rilke asks us to.

Listening may seem like a simple task—it’s so easy that God can do it, right?

But, none of us at the start are equipped to deal with the initial crossroads of learning to listen.

In our world, Google Maps, real maps, YouTube tutorials, AI, and guides on anything imaginable, our intuition has disappeared.

When we face hard life choices or transitions, they are rarely life-or-death situations and they almost never require us to walk blindly down a path.

Yet, there is something missing in our hearts in this hollow world with no anticipation. At many major crossroads in Greek Culture, a small shrine or temple would be built for Apollo, where unsure travelers could contemplate which route they should take.

Where are our temples? Where are our crossroads?

Our crossroads are within our modern fractured soul.

To find the way out, we must tap into the transcendent experiences of reality. Not simulacra hyper-realities.

Many of you reading this are writers, and Rilke advises that

Writing poetry, as you taught us, is not desiring,

not striving for infinity.

Poetry is reality.

Real writing requires us to drop our ambition to publish a book, become a full-time author, or use art to accomplish something.

Instead, Rilke advises that writing poetry is to transcend irony, move beyond our obsession with relationships, and walk a road without ambition.

He asks us to see reality with as much clarity as possible, which is the first real step in any yogic or shamanic path.

Most writers love to obsess over tricks, spending time writing, and a million other things. But, integrating Rilke’s advice, which takes years of dedicated practice, will do more for your writing than anything else

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III

A God can do it, but will you show me how
a man can find his destiny through lyre strings?
Our spirit is split, and where the roads meet
inside us, there is no temple for Apollo's songs.

Writing poetry, as you taught us, is not desiring,
not striving for infinity.
Poetry is reality. Easy, for a God.
But when can we truly be awake? And when will he bend

the Desert and the stars into us?
Young man, you love, and your voice
forces your mouth open — learn

to forget passion. Learn to forget music. It will end.
Real singing is a new breath.
Gusts that touch nothing. A shimmer in a god. A wind.

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Here is a new poem from the Desert Orpheus collection that I haven’t posted before.

Under a Black Sun

Coyotes haunt the ridge —

Desert fairies 
find us lulled
in warm mountains
under crows
rotating beneath a black sun. 

Amber fractals flurry, 
voices of Desert spirits
mist in the heat — 

with no place to rest 

we burn 

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Warm Mountain

I will release my Warm Mountain collection next, comprising 100-300 mystical translations of Cold Mountain’s poetry and a collection of original poems written in the classic Chinese voice.

Rilke calls us into silence, but Cold Mountain lived in austere silence and zen detachment for decades, bringing that practice into his poetry. Many modern poets like Rilke, Wright, Synder, and others I love touched that silence but never lived it fully.

I 100% believe you can learn more about Zen and Eastern philosophy from reading Cold Mountain and other Zen poets than practicing Zen.

My first Warm Mountain post includes three other translations that everyone should check out. I also have a Warm Mountain original poem that will give you a sense of what I’ll be writing.

Today’s selection is a more intense poem about Chinese tradition, but it mirrors Rilke’s poem above.

If you go deep enough into the wild, there are endless crossroads. Eventually, you have to release up all ambition and control and spiral deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.

Once you can leave simulacra behind (in your heart and the world) you’re ready to write poetry with Warm Mountain.

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Desert Labyrinth

Driving up Warm Mountain road,
this maze never ends.
Canyons tower above slowed creeks,
shadows split beneath sandstone teeth —
Stringy moss once combed these walls
but in this labyrinth, the wind sings in oblique light.
Who can leave a mapped world behind
to burn with me in dark crevices? 

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Mystical Poets of the Spanish Modernist Era

For years, I’ve discussed the power of Spanish Symbolist poetry. From 1880 to 1930, much of the best poetry in the world was written in Spanish.

While many authors were lost in Victorian BS or simple modernist object poetry, the Spanish took the torch from German Romanticism and brought poetry back to its home inside the heart.

Antonio Machado, who will be featured a ton in this collection, and he wrote of this new poetry in 1917 when he said that

I thought that the substance of poetry does not lie in the sound value of the word, nor in its color, nor in the metric line, nor in the complex of sensations, but in the deep pulse of the spirit; and this deep pulse is what the soul contributes, if it contributes anything, or what it says, if it says anything, with its own voice, in a courageous answer to the touch of the world. And I thought also that a man can overtake by surprise some of the phrases of his inward conversations with himself, distinguishing the living voice from the dead echoes; that he, looking inward, can glimpse the deep-rooted images, the things of feeling which all men possess.

Below is a mystical poem by Cesar Vallejo from 1918. It depicts longing in such a special way. We can’t all be Cold Mountain, Orpheus, or Rilke. Many of us are of the world and in the world. But this poem happens when you take the lessons from the previous poems and apply them to your own life.

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Dead Idyll by Cesar Vallejo

I wonder what she is doing at this hour,
my sweet Andean Rita,
rush-born, wild and cherry dark —
now that this longing asphyxiates me,
my blood dozes, like lazy amber cognac within me.

Where are those hands now
that humbly ironed our white linen
in silent afternoons?

What has become of her spring vestido,
her offerings, her walk,
her scent of flor de agua?

She must be at the door,
watching an early monsoon,
a cardinal on the terracotta tiles cries,
and shivering, she says at last — “Jesus, it’s cold!”

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FAQ:

Why publish so many books so Fast?

I’ve been working on all these collections for years.

I started translating Cold Mountain in 2020.

I started translating some of the Spanish poems in 2014.

The Desert Orpheus translations are mostly all new, but the poems are a lot of my older stuff. Warm Mountain and Mystical Spanish Poetry will have more of my new poetry.

All these collections are already near the finish line.

I also feel a drive to get transformative work out there. When people ask me who they should read, I want to be able to share work with a track record of changing lives. Many people have never read Rilke, Cold Mountain, Vallejo, Machado, and many of the poets I’ll be translating.

Also, when I am at my best, I can write multiple poems a week and translate multiple poems a week. That should guarantee that I get at least two books out a year.

What is your translation method?

I follow Robert Bly’s methodology, which you can read it about it here. I work with native speakers of the language for step two of the process.

Why Poetry?

We have an unhealthy obsession with fiction in the knowledge and creativity space. Over the past few months, I've realized that many advanced philosophy and fiction readers have no idea about the great poets.

They also don’t realize there is as much transformative writing in poetry as in fiction. Poetry is also much easier to get people into than handing them Infinite Jest.

I know countless people holding down the fiction game, so I am going to get poetry back in line with fiction before I start focusing on fiction again.

How Are You Publishing These Books?

I am self-publishing all these books. The future of becoming a full-time author is driving readers to your Substack (from whatever social media, in-person, or whatever else) to familiarize them with your work, then drive them to your book when it comes out.

Questions?

If you have any other questions, ask below!