From the Mountain

This early collection of poems by A. S. Kline, finds the poet working towards the achievement of perspective, aiming for that place on the mountain of the mind where one can collect one’s own thoughts and begin to understand the slopes climbed, the geography and history of the self. The title poem draws on Taoist images and themes, with the poet somewhat distanced from the human world below, and immersed in the natural world around him, much as the Taoist adept would wander, anonymously, on mountain paths, following the way without that striving to follow the way which is self-defeating. Nature is the touchstone by which the natural self must be judged, or into which it passes beyond judgement.