"A Luminous Uplift is a rich compendium of John Brandi's new and selected prose that revisits rambles in three continents. An intrepid sojourner, he's equally at home sleeping under the stars or in a hermit's stone hut reading passages of travel accounts by Matsuo Basho or Nicholas Roerich. Whether on a rocky foot path crossing a Himalayan icefall or when homesteading, chopping wood, gardening in the American Southwest and engaging with ancient Pueblo culture, Brandi's seasoned haiku poet's eye inspires and celebrates spirit, the power of place and the wonders he beholds venturing off the beaten path. His pen flows with lyrical exuberance!"–Marilyn Stablein, author of Sleeping in Caves
"John Brandi opens this dazzling collection with a description of road trips he took through the landscapes of Southern California with his parents, who taught him how to see. In subsequent chapters, the boy becomes a bard, and we trek with him up mountain trails, drop into roiling cities, meet eccentric visionaries and return home to the wilds of New Mexico. Brandi leans into each experience of place with the open senses and curious mind of a sommelier, tasting deeply, distilling the essence. His peripatetic embrace of the world is passionate and contagious. 'My feet are burning, so is my heart, ' he writes. 'A pleasant madness flames out of my head and lifts my hat as I tramp this uninhabited backcountry.'"–Anne Valley-Fox, author of The Household Muse (with Tom Ireland)"Eyes and mind wide open to unanticipated concurrencies of place and time, it's no coincidence that Brandi, a long-practicing artist and poet, is drawn to shamanic shapechangers; his favorite landscapes are transformative vistas where ongoing dramas of the natural world play out in moments and eons. A Luminous Uplift, the latest of his distinguished publications, charts numinous inner realms to illuminate a profoundly engaged spirit of place–both around the world and at home in New Mexico."–Ken Rodgers, Kyoto Journal
