Frederick Glaysher studied writing with Robert Hayden shortly before his death in 1980 and is the editor
of both Robert Hayden's Collected Prose (The University of Michigan Press) and his Collected
Poems (Liveright). He has a new book, The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture,
forthcoming October 1, 2007.
Glaysher lived for more than fifteen years outside Michigan in Japan, on the Colorado River
Indian Tribes Reservation in Arizona, and on the Mississippi, ultimately returning to his
suburban hometown of Rochester Hills. A Fulbright scholar to China in 1994, Glaysher studied
at Beijing University, the Buddhist Mogao Caves on the old Silk Road, and elsewhere in China,
including the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. While a National Endowment
for the Humanities scholar in 1995 on India, he further explored the conflicts
between the traditional regional civilizations of Islamic and Hindu cultures and modernity
An outspoken advocate of the United Nations and accredited participant at the UN Millennium Forum
(May 22-26, 2000), he takes literary account of global realities.
Like Whitman and many other writers, Glaysher has published in revolt against the prevailing conceptions of literature, life, politics, and faith that have become firmly entrenched in contemporary world culture.
Midnight Visitors
Mainly indistinct faces circling
in front of me in the abyss of night,
but at times I see a Cambodian
next to a neatly stacked pile of skulls,
a Jew staring from a crack in a boxcar,
an African, more corpse than man,
faltering through a desert that is as
desiccated as the landscape of our soul.
Copyright © 1999 Frederick Glaysher
Camp II
(Poston, Arizona)
Across the floating bridge of dreams,
the scorching Hell of people choking on dust,
caged like rats behind miles of wire,
miles of that damned fence
machine guns in guard towers,
floodlights searching for the schemes of Tokyo.
Like a bad dream it goes by,
tar paper roofs blown off in the night,
a place beyond description and tears.
Copyright © 1999 Frederick Glaysher
Dag Hammarskjold
No more of these sad tones
of fear and the scourge of war,
of chaos and anarchy,
of the passions of humankind.
Though the first movements wander
among the dark and threatening
conflicts of Beethoven's Ninth,
the "Ode to Joy" shall come.
All the millions will unite
as brothers, surrendered
to the way of peace,
to a higher synthesis of joy.
Copyright © 1999 Frederick Glaysher
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