John Mann is an archivist of the human heart and an accountant both of the natural world and popular culture. His precisely observed juxtapositioning of these in Able, Baker, Charlie never fails to surprise, never fails to move us. As Rilke advised readers to change our lives, so does Mann often build toward the insistent, as in "Hand over your dearest songs"-advice which the poet himself has surely heeded in this marvelous collection. -David Stevenson John Mann's poems approach you not like the lantern that you plod towards through darkness, but like fireflies appearing at different points...

Albert Rudolph, affectionately known as Rudi, was a spiritual original, a maverick yogi whose teachings transformed the lives of thousands of emerging spiritual seekers. Before The Sun: Meeting Rudi chronicles the astounding day-to-day events by John Mann, one of Rudi's first students who managed to survive the rollercoaster ride of studying Kundalini yoga in the tumultuous 1960s of New York City under the tutelage of arguably one of the most profound and adept masters of inner work. The book represents Mr. Mann's experience as Rudi's student and friend, taken as an indirect approach to the...