Enneagrammatic Improvisations

Book excerpt: The poems in this volume are experimental in nature. They came out of a study of the enneagram—a symbol best described in P. D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous. While looking for a way to experience the laws expressed in enneagram, Frederick Bauman devised a poetic form of nine verses of three lines each. The poems are presented in the order written and then the stanzas are rearranged in the order 9, 3, 6, 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7. Readers interested in the enneagram are referred to Mr. Ouspensky’s book and the “Holy Planet Purgatory” chapter of G.I. Gurdjeff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, which does not mention the enneagram but discusses the laws it symbolizes. Frederick Bauman has been involved in the literary world since the Seventies when he gave poetry readings at various establishments in New York City and founded a much publicized poetry reading series at Chumleys in Greenwich Village. In the Eighties he was a contributing editor for the literary quarterly, Home Planet News. In the Nineties he turned to fiction, writing short stories and the novel, Periwinkle. He is married and lives in the Catskills region of New York State.