BOOK LIST /DONNA SEAMAN'S REVIEW

The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul. By Rodger Kamenetz. Oct. 2007. 272p. HarperOne, $24.95 (9780060575830). 154.6.
After delineating connections between Judaism and Buddhism in The Jew and the Lotus (1994) and reporting on contemporary Jewish mysticism in Stalking Elijah (1997), Kamenetz continues his heady and unusual spiritual chronicle by examining the role dreams play in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in psychoanalysis. Kamenetz keenly investigates the interpretation of dreams from Jacob and Joseph to Freud and Jung and neatly elucidates relevant aspects of gnosticism and kabbalah. In some of the book's most probing passages, Kamenetz analyzes the triumph of the word over the image and the elevation of sacred texts over direct experience in monotheism (a fascinating corollary to Leonard Shlain's Alphabet and the Goddess, 1998). Then there are Kamenetz's dramatic adventures in dream work. He first consults with Colette Aboulker-Muscat, an 87-year-old Algerian practitioner of "kitchen kabbalah" in Jerusalem, then finds his true dream teacher in Marc Bregman, a Vermont postman turned shaman. Kamenetz's hard-won and provocative insights into "how exquisitely made" dreams are, and how dreams "reveal us to ourselves," profoundly alter our perception of what goes on while we sleep.--Donna Seaman

Washington Cathedral, December 2 2007

WORDS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL NEW ORLEANS NOVEMBER 18

9:45 a. m. Hotel Monteleone Nouelle Orleans East/West Ballroom
Spiritual Journeys
Rodger Kamenetz, author of The History of Last Night’s Dream will introduce this year's Spiritual Journeys Program.

Master Class, Dreams:
How they Inform the Creative Process
Led by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler, author of From Where We Dream. With art photographer Josephine Sacabo, whose new collection of images, Nocturnes, is informed by dreams.

10:45 a. m. Hotel Monteleone Nouvelle Orleans East/West Ballroom
Getting in Touch With Your Soul
Dreams: Signposts to the Soul
Led by bestselling author of The Jew in the Lotus and Stalking Elijah, Rodger Kamenetz, whose newest foray into the spiritual world is The History of Last Night’s Dream. Rodger will call on other artists to tell personal dreams as examples of the unique ways in which each person’s dreams are signals to us to pay attention and get in touch with our inner selves, our souls. Among those he is inviting to participate are Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana; visiting Palestinian poets Ibtisam Barakat and visual artist Jana Napoli, who created a unique tribute to the victims of Katrina with her recent installation in New York and Louisiana, Floodwall, composed of bureau drawers which once belonged to Katrina victims.

WORDS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

My daughter Anya reports on youth demo in Washington

It's not about dreams, but it's a good story about how young people are shaking up the political class and trying to change global warming.

poems in ZEEK

ZEEK, a terrific online (and offline) literary magazine has a new issue out,
with poems edited by Rick Chess, including a few by me:

ZEEK