My Darling Mountain Flower

James Maurie Halm retired from his chemical research activities when he moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains to pursue his avocation of creative writing. His major interest is poetry, and he has published in both chemistry and poetry. His training and experience in science has cast his world in the web of beauty and order. He writes of elegance and poignancy in the human condition. A decade after his wife passed away, James met Dorothy (Doti), a widowed mountain flower of Western, North Carolina. The match went from curiosity to impressiveness to heartfelt respect. James relates, “We learned a lot from each other and after several years, a romance evolved which escalated into a grand adventure. We were, and continue to be, blessed with each other’s companionship. The strikes of beauty and wonder in this human association were like lightning strikes to command poetic thunder. I hope you hear these cascades throughout this book of poetry.”

This novel is one of the most ambitious and remarkable literary achievements of our time. It is a picaresque, psychological novel—a novel of the road, a journey or voyage of the human spirit in its search for reality in a world of illusion and nightmare. It is an epic of what might be called the Arabian Nights of American life. Marguerite Young’s method is poetic, imagistic, incantatory; in prose of extraordinary richness she tests the nature of her characters—and the nature of reality. Miss MacIntosh, My Darling is written with oceanic music moving at many levels of consciousness and perception; but the toughly fibred realistic fabric is always there, in the happenings of the narrative, the humor, the precise details, the definitions of the characters. Miss MacIntosh herself, who hails from What Cheer, Iowa, and seems downright and normal, with an incorruptible sense of humor and the desire to put an end to phantoms; Catherine Cartwheel, the opium lady, a recluse who is shut away in a great New England seaside house and entertains imaginary guests; Mr. Spitzer, the lawyer, musical composer and mystical space traveler, a gentle man, wholly unsure of himself and of reality; his twin brother Peron, the gay and raffish gambler and virtuoso in the world of sports; Cousin Hannah, the horsewoman, balloonist, mountain-climber and militant Boston feminist, known as Al Hamad through all the seraglios of the East; Titus Bonebreaker of Chicago, wild man of God dreaming of a heavenly crown; the very efficient Christian hangman, Mr. Weed of the Wabash River Valley; a featherweight champion who meets his equal in a graveyard—these are a few who live with phantasmagorical vividness in the pages of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. The novel touches on many aspects of life—drug addiction, woman’s suffrage, murder, suicide, pregnancy both real and imaginary, schizophrenia, many strange loves, the psychology of gambling, perfectionism; but the profusion of this huge book serves always to intensify the force of the central question: “What shall we do when, fleeing from illusion, we are confronted by illusion?” What is real, what is dream? Is the calendar of the human heart the same as that kept by the earth? Is it possible that one may live a secondary life of which one does not know? In every aspect, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling stands by itself—in the lyric beauty of its prose, its imaginative vitality and cumulative emotional power. It is the work of a writer of genius.

Most poems in the two anthologies were written in my high school and only a few dated were written in my college. They were deeply influenced by Tagore and Gibran. TO MY DEAR was written for the girl I loved that time and it is only one third of the whole anthology. There are still two thirds longer poems I didn’t translate because of my laziness. If it would be enjoyed by readers, maybe one day I could translate the whole work and publish them together. In THE SONG OF WANDERER I want to express my disgust and satire to ugliness, describe human being’s spiritual world and show my sympathy for people’s embarrassing situation. Human beings are lonely, absurd, desolate, unreasonable but in some ways, they are touching and moving.

This is the story of David Michael Sonneman and an ancient cross forged of gold that weaves its way through the ages and the heritage of two long standing families that date back to the colonial foundations of both America and the Caribbean islands of the once formidable Spanish Empire. This epic saga is the story of that man and the gift of his golden cross as told through the unlikely lens of a traditional middle-class man of Irish-American descent, Mr. Ronan James Cassidy. While the lives of both men intersect for the unlikeliest of reasons, they are both on a journey in search of their own redemption for varying reasons. Mr. Sonneman and his sister, Nadie are the both the product of neglect and abuse brought about by unfortunate circumstances and centuries old traditions of the deeply European rooted elite caste of American society. As both Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Sonneman discover the dirty secrets of David’s past and the untold wealth tied to his ancient cross of gold, a plan emerges that was formed long ago by God to return His two once lost children to His graces and levy judgment upon those responsible for the degenerate care of David and his ancestors leading into the American social and financial upheaval of our era. This is the song of both men’s long sought redemption and the return to grace of those who bore the legacy of the golden cross over the centuries that corresponded to the rise of the west. For it is through the emergence of the faith of these two men alone that both manage to persevere through the far different but trying challenges of their life. “Return to me” and “My peace be with you” are the watchwords offered and answered by these two men.