The Evolving Role of Poetry

The Quest for Meaning in Poetry with Charles Upton

Charles Upton’s first books of poetry were published in 1968 and 1969 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Light Books in San Francisco. He was then considered the youngest member of the “beat generation” as he was still in high school. He has subsequently written many books associated with the traditionalist school of spirituality including What Poets Used to Know, The Science of the Greater Jihad, Folk Metaphysics, Alien Disclosure Deception: The Metaphysics of Social Engineering, Day and Night on the Sufi Path, Dugin Against Dugin: A Traditionalist Critique of the Fourth Political Theory, System of the Antichrist,  and Vectors of the Counter-Initiation. His most recent book of poetry is Wars of Love and Other Poems. His website is https://charles-upton.com/

Note: There is a GoFundMe page for Charles Upton who is dealing with colon cancer. See https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-charles-upton-survive-colon-cancer

To download a copy of See, Sing, and Know: The Art of Poetry in Five Lessons by Charles Upton, as referenced in this interview, go to https://newthinkingallowed.com/See.docx

Here Charles Upton reflects on more than a half-century of involvement in the world of poetry. He explains the three main functions of poetry as meaning, sound, and imagery. He laments the downfall that poetry has experienced in recent decades. He reads from some favorite poets as well as from his own work. He also reflects on the sad tendency of poets to die young.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:38 The debt owed by poets
00:13:20 Good and bad poetry
00:28:59 The loss of meaning
00:44:02 The danger of poetry
00:55:13 The sound of poetry
01:05:20 Reading from The Wars of Love
01:30:32 Poetry needs an audience
01:37:24 Let meaning and wisdom find you
01:42:24 Conclusion

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

(Recorded on April 9, 2025)

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