Header Graphic
" mystery in a luminous word..."
charles frode
Author Writer Teacher Speaker
Header Graphic
The Writer Author
Frode invokes the orphic poets, Hart Crane, and—“my hand in yours”—Walt Whitman, speakers of The Word, the epic minstrel conductors into the literary intellectual od—Steinbeck, LeClezio, Cormac McCarthy, Julio Cortazar, Hart Crane, Garcia Marquez.  
 

"I just love words. Love, like need.

"Through every word I write, I feel more, and I feel more deeply. Through the stories that emerge word by word on my pages, I cope with the recurring inner preoccupations of my mind and heart:

The miraculous biochemical nature of consciousness, the brain, and mind; the natural healing power of flowers and the garden; the destruction of traditional Idaho farmhouses to make way for the epidemic of residential construction and neighborhoods; Adverse Childhood Experiences and how that trauma creates damaged juveniles; the profoundly simple Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads; the sensual beauty, colors, and textures of fabrics and the joyful art of sewing; the power and blessings of individual teachers in one’s life; my dear writing teacher, John Steinbeck, whose humanity and word skill continue to astound me; the varieties, the feel, and the utility of paper; the Al-Andalus period in Spain where Islam, Judaism, and Christianity coexisted and flourished through the translation and dissemination of knowledge; how change in the external world creates transformation in the internal world; and finally, perhaps most importantly, the power of human love and passion to create enduring emotional associations in our brains and bodies. 
 

"So then, something about me? My profession for the previous half century is English Language Arts Creative Writing teacher. I have worked with mainstream, language learners, alternative, on-the-spectrum, and incarcerated high school aged juveniles to help them with their word-writing struggles, way behind high school classes, their emotional trauma, and their self-esteem. I blog about writing and the current findings in meditation and cognitive-brain research. I am married for 34 years to my Aztec queen soul mate from the breadbasket of Mexico, Yuriria, Guanajuato.

"I am my wife’s sous chef, and we garden and harvest together during the Idaho spring summer and fall. I am bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English. We parent four out-of-the-nest children, two of whom live close enough to get regular food care packages from us. If and when I have time to spare, I make sourdough bread, play flamenco and alt-rock-country-whatever guitar—Wood Brothers, The White Buffalo, Alan Jackson, Kevin Gordon, The Dead, Ska, a few others.

I meditate every day. Clear your mind of idle thoughts."


 

Order your own copies of Frode's 6 books now

  1. A Dream of India & Other Mystic Stories of Radiance and Darkness    14 stories that emerged from mystical intersections of humanity, reality, and magic.

  2. One Times One & Other Numinous Stories of Redemption and Loss    14 sinister, disturbing, gently cynical stories.

  3. Dreaming of Fish & Other Apocalyptic Stories Of Foreboding and Grace    15 haunting stories, the last concentrated benignly pessimistic squeezings from a late harvest, a mystical gumbo of stirred dimensions.

  4.  I Am Goldmund: My Spiritual Odyssey With Narcissus    Frode's memoir recounting my spiritual odyssey with a modern monk wherein we discovered an identical passion and understanding of archetypical forces embodied in one friendship as Hermann Hesse revealed in his Narcissus and Goldmund.

  5.  The Garden: Perennial Reflections on Beginnings and Ends     Metaphorical, spiritual, and human reflections on gardening, reality, and the mysteries and wonder of being human.

  6. The Yearning Lurks: The Collected Poems     fascination with and seduction by the sound power of words, love poems, love for life, and its complement, mortality, poems of free verse, rhyming, metrical, and narrative.