words & art by mike mahoney, 2010-2011.
146 pgs.
 
Conjured out of my 22-24-yr-old consciousness from a profound love for all life on this planet, and simultaneously from a shellshock'd primal scream that we can do better, Emergence is a Psychedelic American Epic of 38 interlocking poems in the long form tradition of Antler, Ginsberg and Whitman -- written between 2010 & 2011 from many levels & states on the spectrum of consciousness. 
 
Also included is its postscript poem, 21st Century Prayer -- a rhapsody of sacred poetic intention and praise written in Wallingford while sitting in the grass in May of 2012. 

Emergence was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and part of it was published in Napalm Health Spa's 2013 special edition issue: Long Poem Masterpieces of the Postbeats.
 

“…I felt like I was reading poems written by the reincarnation of myself and I’m not even dead yet!  Or as if “Howl” and “Factory” got married and had a child and it was you.  Or the miraculous return of Whitman, Snyder, Muir, Abbey, Rumi, Gibran in a tender-hearted 24-year-old marijuana mushroom sacrament wilderness visionquester drummer shaman freedom singer. “Newday heart awakening Eden planet” visualized and realized and experienced in the promise of your young mind… 
Emergence has some of the greatest incantatory incandescent chant odes I ever read.  It takes on present ecocide on every level yet ends with a love poem to the America Whitman dreamed and we all dream and the last lines gave me a feeling of hope -- hope for the future, trust and faith in the spiritual poetry path with new luminaries like yourself emerging -- emboldened by those who came before and keeping the vision of wilderness and the Milky Way radiant and triumphant… 
So many lines I went WOW over, so many passages of wild poetry flow -- Whitman and Ginsberg you made happy in Paradiso.  
More than any young poet I know of you are keeping alive the rhapsodic song…”
-- Antler