Author Description

"One can find the lore of beggars in Hinduism, Buddhism and Zen, Sufism, Daoism, the poetic traditions of China and Japan. These unsettling characters are on the outskirts of conventional living: society's exiles tangled in tatters, coming out of side streets and back alleys. Or in the rearview mirror of our speeding car, we sometimes sight the occasional beggar saint, sage, or seer under a freeway, moving in slow motion from shadow to shaft of sun, tapping off a cigar ash in a concrete corner of oblivion. As a Jewish expression I sit beside them weeping and singing psalms along the dark road of Cosmic Exile."- Josh Goldberg "Like the psalms of tradition, Josh's psalms are blessing, praise, prayer and plea. These are psalms that disclose, disrobe, disrupt; the veil is by turns coaxed open and ripped aside, in gestures by turns gentle and brutal.... These are psalms marked deeply by their mystical turn: part passionate frenzy, love-drunk rapture, part hushed whisper, a secret passed from lover to Beloved. These are psalms of promise, supplication, surrender. Naked, they present themselves, beggar at the door, lover in the making."- Beth Benedix, editor of Subverting Scriptures: Critical Reflections on the Use of the Bible