Author George Lysloff is a thoughtful man who misses his wife who has passed away; loves his children; has dreams and thoughts he wants to share with the world. He is, in his own words, “one of those that [sic] will try to cultivate familial relationships, possible with exaggerated persistence or assiduity, maybe for the wrong reasons and possibly in response to a personal need.” Poetry, Transcendence and the Search for Wisdom is the third in a series of inner dialogues written in self-contemplative prose interspersed with similarly self-contemplative poems that visually break up the longueur.
Lysloff’s book, at 200 pages of monologue, is geared more toward personal expression than public consumption. The author himself states that his “self-analysis is maybe of limited interest to the general reader” as his ruminations may sound “too tedious, personal or self-centered.” This is indeed a cathartic expression of loss, a dissemination of religious viewpoints and their relevance, a study of friendship and aging… those private moments of inner questioning most rarely have opportunity to share.
Unfortunately, a little bit of this goes a long way. And 200 pages is a long way — particularly when those pages don’t come equipped with good editing and are hampered by improper grammar, spelling and punctuation.
This is a challenging book on many levels, including its length, subject matter, and focus on personal reflection. But Lysloff can certainly be commended for the difficult task of writing his thoughts, beliefs and questions with the utmost personal vulnerability and the faith that it is “the attraction of a book that brings out points of view that can be the source of argumentation, dispute, objections, etc.”
Also available as an ebook.
