David Gascoyne's elegantly measured prose provides the reader with the rare instance not only of how a visionary poet reads his contemporaries, but of how he blueprints ideas which provide the instructive dynamic informing his poetry.

Gascoyne's mind is awesome. An isolated spiritual journeyer in a materialistic century, Gascoyne's integrity stems from his belief in visionary imagination as inspired interface between conscious and unconscious worlds. From his first youthfully audacious paper, Gascoyne distinguished between poetry as activity-of-the-mind and poetry as means-of-expression. His powerful affirmation of the superior value of an imaginatively alive poetry over one that simply describes was from the start his inspired credo.

This book is a moving human document of what it means to be a poet, and to survive by that means alone, in a society radically unsympathetic to this calling. Having experienced the defenceless vulnerability of being a committed poet in a capitalist ethos, I find Gascoyne's survival heroic, his courage paradigmatic to the poetic calling.

Although David Gascoyne writes warmly of the darker aspects of T.S. Eliot's psyche, Eliot was in large to prove the prototype of the poet deserting his art for the sanctuary of an editor's desk. Many poets have done an injustice to poetry seeking personal security in acceptable professions. They relegate art to the status of a consuming hobby. How can one be fully open to the possibilities of experience if one's days are given over to immersion in establishment values? Gascoyne is among the best antidotes to this duplicitous trend.

Gascoyne's poetry of imploded mystic hallucination sounded a completely new, revolutionary note in British poetics. He found, for the English language, visionary continents already mapped out by Lautreamont, Rimbaud and the surrealists. He was to encounter madness in the process, often the way for those who pursue the journey to the interior. He says: "I am a poet who wrote himself out when young and then went mad. I tried to write poetry again and succeeded to a certain extent but it is not the same as the poetry I wrote before." Gascoyne's greatness hinges on this tragic concept of burning out.

Collateral with the inspired poetry he was writing in the 30's came the equally eventful prose essays which form the early part of this book, chief amongst them being Gascoyne's preface to his book of free translations Hölderlin's Madness (1938). This particular essay is one of the finest ever written on the subject of visionary poetry. It achieved an empathy for its subject's plight prophetic of Gascoyne's own. At only twenty-two his declarative statement in defence of poetic vision was published. Already he inhabits the great night of the German romantics in which the poet anticipates imagination becoming reality."They are poets and philosophers of nostalgia and the night. A disturbed night, whose paths lead far among forgotten things, mysterious dreams and madness. And yet a night that precedes the dawn, and is full of longing for the sun. These poets look forward out of their night: and Hölderlin in his madness wrote always of sunlight and dazzling air, and the islands of the Mediterranean noon."

To have realised this at such a young age was also an initiation experience into the excruciating social isolation which comes of holding these secrets. Gascoyne was not only set apart from the predominantly social concerns of British poetry in the 1930s, but from the main thrust of twentieth-century British poetry, with its attempts either to repress or sanitise the imagination. "Persistence is all" Rilke was to advise, and David Gascoyne, as poet, has never wavered. The price has been high. Lacking any support structure for his undertaking, David Gascoyne the private man has been broken by his quest. He returned home to his parents in middle-age, broke, ill, conceiving himself a failure in their eyes.

In 1965, his Collected Poems were published. He felt it was some sort of justification for having lived, some vindication of an identity denied him by a capitalist ideology. These are the sufferings inherent in pursuing a poetic vocation, as opposed to writing poetry as an avocation to a career. Gascoyne is one of the few who in every generation are prepared to sacrifice their lives in the interests of poetry. In his "Note On Symbolism" Gascoyne further enforces his conviction that the way to apprehending spirit is through the inner evaluation of experience. He writes: 'Each man must undertake alone and in silence the task of objective and empirical reality's changing and uncertain surface.'

Of extreme interest are the two autobiographical essays: "The Most Astonishing Book In The English Language" and "Self-Discharged." In the first of these Gascoyne describes having discovered in the early 1940s at Watkins bookshop an extraordinary book named OAHSPE: A New Bible. Its prophetic contents are subscribed to by a cult called Kosmon, purporting to expound the secrets of the visible and invisible universes. These became inextricably linked to the delusional promptings about apocalypse which eventually led to Gascoyne's confinement. (The poet at one time believed it his mission to break into Buckingham Palace and alert the Royal Family to the coming of a new spiritual awareness.) The consequences of his compulsive actions were to have Gascoyne sectioned, and in 'Self-Discharged' he describes life inside the dystopian precinct of an asylum.

Gascoyne's prose and poetry are of the highest significance, products of an imagination in discourse with the archetypal Kingdom. If both Hölderlin and Rimbaud "believed the poet to be capable of penetrating to a secret world and of receiving the dictation of a transcendental inner-voice," David Gascoyne did, too. The poetry stopped. His continued celebration of the exalted visionary dynamic did not. His later criticism, especially of surrealism, involves a generosity of spirit which is in itself a monumental achievement.

This book represents poetic truth as we seldom encounter it, and as such should be a touchstone for all future poets. A hard-won achievement of a great poet.

This book is very helpful for families, enabling them to plan for end-of-life choices in a non-threatening way. It was so easy for my family to sit down and go through this manual at their leisure, really giving a gift of their end-of-life wishes and directions. I would recommend this book to all families of all ages.

This is one of those treatments which would make an excellent article in a business publication yet, unfortunately, has been expanded to book length. Case studies are numerous, shallow, and typically one paragraph long. After the first couple of chapters I found it repetitive as the same points were made about the same companies, only under different chapter headings.

The title page lists Ozcubukcu as co-author, but the dust jacket does not mention him/her, focusing solely on Gascoyne. It is possible that Ozcubukcu wrote the book from interviews with Gascoyne. Given the wandering path with which the book covers its subject, this seems likely.

There are a lot of "old model" - "new model" comparisons in the numerous tables, usually over simplifying what business was like BI (Before the Internet) compared to the dynamic new possibilities the Internet offers. One wonders how anyone made any money in the past.

In one chart, the authors describe the "New" world has one without barriers to entry and two pages later wax eloquent about how an early Internet adopter has established substantial entry barriers by using an interactive Web page. This is but one example of the books internal inconsistencies. One wonders if they read their own material. The book also contains numerous editing mistakes.

The authors speak of the Internet as a "paradigm shifting" technology which will change how all businesses operate (I wonder if McDonald's has received the word yet) rather than just another new method for communications between businesses and their customers and partners- about as "revolutionary" as the telegraph and the telephone.

The authors make many good points and offer sound advice, but this is pretty much finished by the end of the first 50 pages. Compared to other business books I have read, it offers little meat, a great deal of cheering and waving of pom-pons, and a shallow treatment of the subject, not worth the purchase price nor the time to read it. It's main selling point is that it reinforces the latest business fad of waxing eloquent about how the Internet will change the world.

I ordered 3 books from Amazon.com on the development of an Internet Strategy for my company. This book is clearly the leader in the presentation and development of an Internet strategy. It is well written with relevant examples, tables and commentary. Don't waste your time and money on other titles -- this is the one.

Gascoyne does a great job of articulating the processes required to align Corporate Internet Strategy with core business Objectives. This is a critical component of any Strategic Marketing Plan.