Ready to step into your adventure of initiation? By including the two poems “Song of Sophroniscus’ Son” and “Lynne” within his collection among others of comparable power, this poet entices readers into a world where they can freshly experience lyrical initiations into certain mysteries, certain “realms not yet named/not shown/calculated endeavor” and certain “joys and empowerments” that only lovers share. Moving first through a cluster of poems in Part I entitled “The Seeker,” then through another in a second Part, “The Sought,” readers come to uncover an articulated inwardness during their passage through the third and final cluster in Part III, “The Found,” that will leave them transformed.
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What do you think readers will find most notable about this book?
Marvin Richard Montney
That the reader discovers he or she wishes to return again and again to reread, and reconsider the thoughts provoked in their first reading. A strange curiosity entices them.
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Have you acquired any good anecdotes surrounding this book? If so, could you share one?
Marvin Richard Montney
Yes, my first interviewer, Ms. Natasha Lee, in reading my book and writing her author interview of me in a San Francisco European-style café, made an error of fact in submitting her newspaper article for publication. It was an honest mistake on her part, a layman’s error if I may say so. She read my listing of “Ph.D./A.B.D./area exam,” evidently, as meaning I obtained my Ph.D. But, alas, Mr. Montney did not attain his Ph.D. “Ph.D./A.B.D./area exam” translates: “Ph.D./All But Dissertation [and] [All But] area exam.” That is, he completed all coursework (and final Sanskrit exam, U. of HI-Manoa, 1985) but did not take his area exam and did not write his dissertation. So I had the newspaper editor print a Correction in his March 2011 issue; otherwise, I could not use and refer to Ms. Lee’s interview article in future as it contained a major error of fact. She did not elect to offer to, nor had she time before her deadline, to submit her article to me for review prior to publication. She was chagrined; but I tried to disabuse her of her feeling so, because she may not have been privy to the academic cognoscente’s inside baseball interpretation of A.B.D.! I wrote her editor and her herself that I thought she wrote a moving, masterful article, as I feel it is, and that she has in my opinion a definite future, if she wishes one, in writing and journalism and as an author and literary critic.
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Did researching and writing this book teach you anything or influence your thinking in any way?
Marvin Richard Montney
Tremendously, in ways almost too numerous to enumerate. Outstanding among them: I discovered my poems seem to appeal to thoughtful readers of youthful ages as well as mature philosophical readers.
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What would you most like readers to tell others about this book?
Marvin Richard Montney
That, by reading first poem through to the last, they actually did experience a personal transformation that can only be characterized as spiritual.
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Can you suggest one question readers might find interesting to discuss, concerning you, your writing in general, or this book?
Marvin Richard Montney
How does the reader-initiate start out her or his journey, and end it? Are they the same person? Are the changes or transformations substantive, or on a merely hedonistic experiential level only? What is the substance or content of the book’s “mysticism”?
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How can readers help you promote this book?
Marvin Richard Montney
That’s easy: by word of mouth, saying to a friend, you’ve gotta read this book. They can also spontaneously write a book review somewhere online, if they are so inspired to do so.
About you: Marvin Richard Montney
Marvin Richard Montney is a prize-winning American poet, novelist, humorous memoirist, playwright, award-winning humorous speaker, published writer and philosopher currently living and writing in California. As instructor in philosophy, William Rainey Harper College, Palatine, Illinois, and graduate teaching assistant in Western and Asian Philosophy, University of Hawaii-Manoa, he taught some Philosophy of India, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Confucius, as well as Western. Born in Leavenworth, Washington of third-generation, Anglo-Saxon-French-American descent, migrant farm worker parents, his father eventually becoming a roofer and later owner-operator of his own roofing company, Marvin Richard Montney was raised in Portland, Oregon. Graduating Cleveland high school as newspaper co-editor, co-validictorian, and student body president, he ranked nineteenth out of the 116 full-time male students of his Whitman College freshman class, and attended Reed College (B.A., (Western) Philosophy), University of Chicago (A.M., Committee on Ideas and Methods, Western and Philosophy of India specialty), and University of Hawaii (Ph.D./A.B.D./area exam, Western and Comparative Indian Philosophy). He visited ten weeks in Shinjukuku district, Tokyo, Japan. With his high school tennis partner, he was Runners-Up Doubles Champion for the State of Oregon. The Bureau of State Audits deemed him eligible, among 4,546, out of 24,915, to enter the supplemental application phase of Californians called to serve on the nation’s first Citizens Redistricting Commission. On June 11, 2010 it notified him he will not proceed to the next selection phase, although it will retain his application materials for ten years, as required by the Voters FIRST Act. “If the bureau is called upon”, it wrote him, “to fill a commission vacancy in the future, the bureau must attempt to fill [it] with prior applicants. Thus, unless you have a conflict of interest that prohibits you from serving, there is a possibility that you may be called upon to serve....” His poem “Lynne” was accepted January 6, 2006 by editor Linda Erickson of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, for publication in a broadside series or in an upcoming issue of the magazine, Poetry Harbor. With his book of poetry The Seeker Is The Sought now published, he is finishing a novel.
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Why do you write?
Marvin Richard Montney
For the thought content, the meanings and values crystallized in indelible form.
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What is your greatest strength as a writer?
Marvin Richard Montney
Intensity of feeling married to clarity of thought and image. Meanings embodied.
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What quality do you most value in yourself?
Marvin Richard Montney
Gandhi’s satyagraha, grasping the truth--in speech, in thought, in action.
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In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?
Marvin Richard Montney
Friendships, love, philosophical idealist thought, world-champion SF Giants baseball team, progressive social values, universal planetary values.
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What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your life?
Marvin Richard Montney
That, if I am fortunate, I may have unburdened myself of a lasting book that people will treasure.
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Is there any new or established author whom you feel deserves more attention, and what is it that strikes you about his or her work?
Marvin Richard Montney
K. C. Bhattacharyya, Search for the Absolute in Neo-Vedanta, U. of HI Press, 1976. His “The Concept of the Absolute and Its Alternative Forms” is a text for twenty-first century idealistic thinking. His metaphysical preoccupation with the absolute serves as a model, I feel, for the foundation of a universal idealism of planetary values.
