Burning the Midnight Oil Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day

In Burning the Midnight Oil, word-wrangler extraordinaire Phil Cousineau has gathered an eclectic and electric collection of soulful poems and prose from great thinkers throughout the ages. Whether beguiling readers with glorious poetry or consoling them with prayers from fellow restless souls, Cousineau can relieve any insomniac's unease. From St. John of the Cross to Annie Dillard, Beethoven to The Song of Songs, this refreshingly insightful anthology soothes and inspires all who struggle through the dark of the night. These "night thoughts" vividly illustrate Alfred North Whitehead's liberating description of "what we do without solitude" and also evoke Henry David Thoreau's reverie, "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." These poetic ponderances sing of the falling darkness, revel in dream-time, convey the ache of melancholy, conspire against sleeplessness, vanquish loneliness, contemplate the night sky, rhapsodize on love, and languorously greet the first rays of dawn. Notable night owls include Rabandranath Tagore, Mary Oliver, Manley Hopkins, Jorge Borges and William Blake.

Winner of the Independent Publisher Award Gold Medal in Inspirational/Spiritual

Phil Cousineau is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, teacher and editor, independent scholar and travel leader, storyteller and TV host. His fascination with art, literature, and the history of culture has taken him from Michigan to Marrakesh, Iceland to the Amazon, in a worldwide search for what the ancients called "the soul of the world." The author of 26 nonfiction books, he's a freelance writer, filmmaker, and an expert on film and mythology. He lives in San Francisco.

Forewordist, Jeff Dowd "The Dude" Dowd is an American film producer and political activist best known as a member of the "Seattle Seven," who went to jail (briefly, for contempt of court) following a violent protest against the Vietnam war.He later moved to Los Angeles, California and became an independent movie producer and promoter. He met the Coen Brothers while they were promoting their first film, Blood Simple. He is the basis for one of their most popular characters, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski from The Big Lebowski.In 2011, Dowd was the subject of an 18-minute documentary-short directed by Jeff Feuerzeig and broadcast on the USA Network as part of its “Character” series.

CONTENTS


Prologue: The Darkness that Heals

Part I: The Twilight Zone

Introduction
But I Sleep Alone, Sappho
Fireflies, Rabandranath Tagore
Acquainted with the Night: Robert Frost
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark, Emily Dickinson
Snowy Night, Mary Oliver
Afterwards, Thomas Hardy
The Times Are Nightfall, Gerard Manley Hopkins
Baruch Spinoza: Jorge Borges,
Blue Mosque Reverie, Phil Cousineau
A Hymn to the Night, Novalis
Each Breath of Light, Annie Dillard
Songs of Owl Women
The Last Prince of Thormond, P. J. Curtis
Last Night in Santorini, Edward Tick
The Tiger, William Blake
Mother Nursing Milky Way: Antler
Among the Sounds of the Night: James Agee
Take That Ride, R. B. Morris
Sunset on the Serengeti, Huston Smith
Coltrane Twilight, Erin Byrne
A Little Night Music, Linda Watanabee McFerrin
You Have Opened a Secret Tonight, Mevlana Rumi
Love at the Edge of the Grand Canyon, Jane Winslow Eliot
Their 50th Anniversary, James Botsford
The Story of King Shadyrar and Sheherazada, Richard Burton





Part II: Nighthawks

Introduction
Night Song, Sappho, Willis Barnstone
A Letter from Galileo, Galileo Galilee
A Page from Galileo’s Journals, Galileo Galilee
Alone with the Stars, Rachel Carson
Glaciers by Starlight, John Muir
Alone in the Arctic Night, Richard E. Byrd
A Night in an Igloo, Georgia Hesse
Edward Hopper: The Nighthawk, Alexander Eliot
Café de Nuit, Erin Byrne
The Domain of Night: The Darkroom: Stuart Balcomb
Light and Shadow, Joanne Warfield
Dead Air / Night Radio, Richard Beban
Night Gigs in Motown, Chris Bakhridge
Miles of Country Roads, Miles Davis
Amsterdam, R. B. Morris
West with the Night, Beryl Markham
Zorba’s Fire, Nikos Kazantzakis
Night Train, Georgia Hesse
Drinking Alone by Moonlight: Li Po
Night Game, William Haney
Pitch Dark, Phil Cousineau
Hares at Play, John Clare
The Cry of the Peacock, Flannery O’Connor
Every Evening I Stroll, Eugene Delacroix
Walking Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Wandering at Night, Walt Whitman
San Francisco Nights, James Norwood Pratt
Elastic Midnight, MIkkel Aaland
Now as the Ancient Night, R. B. Morris
The Night I Drove Kerouac Home: Phil Cousineau
Walking Manila, Pico Iyer
I Walk the City at Night, Mevlana Rumi
The Library at Night, Alberto Manguel



Part III: A Hard Day’s Night

Introduction
Curfew: A European Folk Tale
Insomnia, Abu ibn al-Hammarah
All Night I Could Not Sleep: Zi Ye
Winter Night: Yang-ti
Night is Forever:Zi Ye
Untouched by Sleep: Ovid
The Seems: Samuel Coleridge
The Fore-Shift, Matthew Tate
I Can See in the Midst of Darkness: Mahatma Gandhi
The Origins of Our Fear of the Dark: Bruce Chatwin
Silent Night in No Man’s Land: Stanley Weintraub
Nhac Sanh, Dr. Edward Tick
In My Own House I am a Stranger at Midnight, Fr. Gary Young
The Dangers of Reading All Night, Phil Cousineau [or to intro]
Noche de Los Muertos: Linda McFerrin
Advancing on the Dark: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trade Noctem: Kent Chadwick
The Pains of Sleep: Samuel Coleridge
In a Dark Time: Theodore Roethke
Do Not Go Gentle Into the Dark Night: Dylan Thomas
He Watched Her While She Slept: James Joyce
Lying Awake, May Sarton
A Victim of Insomnia, Loren Eisley
Greek epitaphs, Michael Wolfe
Drunk at My Father’s Grave, Phil Cousineau
The Night Will Pass: Mevlana Rumi







IV: The Dream Factory

Introduction

I Fell Asleep, Ono no Komachi
Night Song, Sappho
Chanzu Tzu’s Dream, translated by Sat Hon and Alicia Fox
A Dream of Mountaineering, Po-Chui
Let Not Sleep Come Upon Thine Eyes, Pythagoras
Thoughts for Bed, Epicurus
The Benefits of the Dark, Leonardo da Vinci
Golden Slumbers, Thomas Dekker
Those Who Do Not Feel This Love, Mevlana Rumi
Windows and Doors, Phil Cousineau
The Midnight Guest, Anacreon
Sonnet XXVII, William Shakespeare
Looking at my Children Asleep, Sharon Olds
Kant’s Critique of Pure Sleeping, Thomas de Quincey
A Dream Within a Dream, Edgar Allan Poe
The Land of Nod, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Sentinel in Love, Farid ud-Din Attar
Postcard from the New Delhi Night, James Botsford
Sonnet 43, William Shakespeare
The Vision to Elektra, Robert Herrick
Last Night, Proserpius
Dreaming of Kubla Khan, Samuel Coleridge
Dreaming While I Drive, R. B. Morris
A Renaissance Remedy for Sleep, Marsilio Ficino
Before Turning Out the Lights, Brother David Steindl-Rast
The Mystery of Jet Lag, Pico Iyer








Part IV: Morning Has Broken

Introduction
Dawn, Sappho
End of the Party, Sappho
An Greeting to the Day, Orpingalik
It Gave Me the Daring, Lalla
To Tan Ch’iu, Li Po
In the Axe-Time, An Ancient Viking Tale
The Night at Zensho-ji Temple, Basho
Was I Changed by the Night? Lewis Carroll
Wake! Omar Khayyam
The Throat of Dawn, Mark Nepo
My Immortal Beloved, Ludwig von Beethoven
Speak to Us of Beauty, Kahil Gibran
Waking in the Monastery, Fr. Gary Young
Each Soul Must Meet the Morning Sun, Ohiyesa
Zero in the Dark, Verlyn Klinkenborg
The Night View of the World, Howard Thurman
I Have Been Tricked, Mevlana Rumi
Delta Dawn, Dr. Edward Tick
The Spirit of St. Louis in the Coming Dawn, Charles Lindbergh
Lying Single in Bed, Samuel Pepys
Our Lives Are Rounded by Sleep, William Shakespeare
The Old City Before Dawn, Pico Iyer
The Blind Watchmaker, Phil Cousineau