Meditations at Midnight: Poetry and Prose

There are few books that can bring you face to face with your own humanity with all its tragic loveliness and at the same time lift you so high above it that you are able to dispassionately examine mankind's absurdity and brilliance. Meditations at Midnight, by Gary Jansen, is such a book. Jansen's stories, verses, and musings are at once familiar, startling, dreamy, funny, and nostalgic. He pays homage to his own favorite writers from Jack Kerouac to Stephen King to Ernest Hemingway to Emily Dickinson to Paulo Coelho and more. This is a book you can devour in one sitting or flip open and just nibble on a thought or a theme that suits your mood. Meditations at Midnight will awaken your love of literature--or inspire it.