Table of Contents

CONTENTS Prologue: The Darkness that Heals Part I: The Twilight Zone Introduction But I Sleep Alone, Sappho Fireflies, Rabandranath Tagore Acquainted with the Night: Robert Frost We Grow Accustomed to the Dark, Emily Dickinson Snowy Night, Mary Oliver Afterwards, Thomas Hardy The Times Are Nightfall, Gerard Manley Hopkins Baruch Spinoza: Jorge Borges, Blue Mosque Reverie, Phil Cousineau A Hymn to the Night, Novalis Each Breath of Light, Annie Dillard Songs of Owl Women The Last Prince of Thormond, P. J. Curtis Last Night in Santorini, Edward Tick The Tiger, William Blake Mother Nursing Milky Way: Antler Among the Sounds of the Night: James Agee Take That Ride, R. B. Morris Sunset on the Serengeti, Huston Smith Coltrane Twilight, Erin Byrne A Little Night Music, Linda Watanabee McFerrin You Have Opened a Secret Tonight, Mevlana Rumi Love at the Edge of the Grand Canyon, Jane Winslow Eliot Their 50th Anniversary, James Botsford The Story of King Shadyrar and Sheherazada, Richard Burton Part II: Nighthawks Introduction Night Song, Sappho, Willis Barnstone A Letter from Galileo, Galileo Galilee A Page from Galileo's Journals, Galileo Galilee Alone with the Stars, Rachel Carson Glaciers by Starlight, John Muir Alone in the Arctic Night, Richard E. Byrd A Night in an Igloo, Georgia Hesse Edward Hopper: The Nighthawk, Alexander Eliot Cafe de Nuit, Erin Byrne The Domain of Night: The Darkroom: Stuart Balcomb Light and Shadow, Joanne Warfield Dead Air / Night Radio, Richard Beban Night Gigs in Motown, Chris Bakhridge Miles of Country Roads, Miles Davis Amsterdam, R. B. Morris West with the Night, Beryl Markham Zorba's Fire, Nikos Kazantzakis Night Train, Georgia Hesse Drinking Alone by Moonlight: Li Po Night Game, William Haney Pitch Dark, Phil Cousineau Hares at Play, John Clare The Cry of the Peacock, Flannery O'Connor Every Evening I Stroll, Eugene Delacroix Walking Walden, Henry David Thoreau Wandering at Night, Walt Whitman San Francisco Nights, James Norwood Pratt Elastic Midnight, MIkkel Aaland Now as the Ancient Night, R. B. Morris The Night I Drove Kerouac Home: Phil Cousineau Walking Manila, Pico Iyer I Walk the City at Night, Mevlana Rumi The Library at Night, Alberto Manguel Part III: A Hard Day's Night Introduction Curfew: A European Folk Tale Insomnia, Abu ibn al-Hammarah All Night I Could Not Sleep: Zi Ye Winter Night: Yang-ti Night is Forever:Zi Ye Untouched by Sleep: Ovid The Seems: Samuel Coleridge The Fore-Shift, Matthew Tate I Can See in the Midst of Darkness: Mahatma Gandhi The Origins of Our Fear of the Dark: Bruce Chatwin Silent Night in No Man's Land: Stanley Weintraub Nhac Sanh, Dr. Edward Tick In My Own House I am a Stranger at Midnight, Fr. Gary Young The Dangers of Reading All Night, Phil Cousineau [or to intro] Noche de Los Muertos: Linda McFerrin Advancing on the Dark: Ralph Waldo Emerson Trade Noctem: Kent Chadwick The Pains of Sleep: Samuel Coleridge In a Dark Time: Theodore Roethke Do Not Go Gentle Into the Dark Night: Dylan Thomas He Watched Her While She Slept: James Joyce Lying Awake, May Sarton A Victim of Insomnia, Loren Eisley Greek epitaphs, Michael Wolfe Drunk at My Father's Grave, Phil Cousineau The Night Will Pass: Mevlana Rumi IV: The Dream Factory Introduction I Fell Asleep, Ono no Komachi Night Song, Sappho Chanzu Tzu's Dream, translated by Sat Hon and Alicia Fox A Dream of Mountaineering, Po-Chui Let Not Sleep Come Upon Thine Eyes, Pythagoras Thoughts for Bed, Epicurus The Benefits of the Dark, Leonardo da Vinci Golden Slumbers, Thomas Dekker Those Who Do Not Feel This Love, Mevlana Rumi Windows and Doors, Phil Cousineau The Midnight Guest, Anacreon Sonnet XXVII, William Shakespeare Looking at my Children Asleep, Sharon Olds Kant's Critique of Pure Sleeping, Thomas de Quincey A Dream Within a Dream, Edgar Allan Poe The Land of Nod, Robert Louis Stevenson The Sentinel in Love, Farid ud-Din Attar Postcard from the New Delhi Night, James Botsford Sonnet 43, William Shakespeare The Vision to Elektra, Robert Herrick Last Night, Proserpius Dreaming of Kubla Khan, Samuel Coleridge Dreaming While I Drive, R. B. Morris A Renaissance Remedy for Sleep, Marsilio Ficino Before Turning Out the Lights, Brother David Steindl-Rast The Mystery of Jet Lag, Pico Iyer Part IV: Morning Has Broken Introduction Dawn, Sappho End of the Party, Sappho An Greeting to the Day, Orpingalik It Gave Me the Daring, Lalla To Tan Ch'iu, Li Po In the Axe-Time, An Ancient Viking Tale The Night at Zensho-ji Temple, Basho Was I Changed by the Night? Lewis Carroll Wake! Omar Khayyam The Throat of Dawn, Mark Nepo My Immortal Beloved, Ludwig von Beethoven Speak to Us of Beauty, Kahil Gibran Waking in the Monastery, Fr. Gary Young Each Soul Must Meet the Morning Sun, Ohiyesa Zero in the Dark, Verlyn Klinkenborg The Night View of the World, Howard Thurman I Have Been Tricked, Mevlana Rumi Delta Dawn, Dr. Edward Tick The Spirit of St. Louis in the Coming Dawn, Charles Lindbergh Lying Single in Bed, Samuel Pepys Our Lives Are Rounded by Sleep, William Shakespeare The Old City Before Dawn, Pico Iyer The Blind Watchmaker, Phil Cousineau

About the Author

Phil Cousineau is a bestselling author, editor, photographer, award-winning documentary filmmaker, adventure travel leader, and independant scholar who lectures around the world on a wide range of topics from mythology, mentorship, and soul. His books include The Art of Pilgrimage, Soul Moments, Riddle Me This, and The Soul Aflame. A protege of the late Joseph Campbell, Cousineau is also the author of The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Reviews

"A holy text." -- Coleman Barks "A wonderful anthology." --Alberto Manuel, The History of Reading "The brighter side of darkness- for some the night inspires. It's not just vampires who seek the dark: it's poets, painters, musicians and artists of all kinds. Writer, filmmaker and traveler Phil Cousineau has edited a new anthology that centers on the creative joys of nighttime. The mixture of poetry and prose is called Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day. The book has a forward from a surprising figure: Jeff Dowd, a film producer and political activist who was the inspiration for The Dude in the Coen Brother's film The Big Lebowski." --NPR Weekend Edition "Sensitively selected, the pieces are moving, haunting, beautiful, leaving the reader with a feeling of quiet pensivity." --City Book Review "Entertaining and enlightening." --ForeWord Reviews "This Holy Fool feels fortunate to join you and all the great artists in this book who have entered The Grand Central Station of the Mind and have passed by the tres boring Orient Express on Track #1 to hop on...the Night Express to our Soul, somewhere at the dark end of the station that leads, if perchance we survive, to the light of life--the secret source. No risk/no reward from this nocturnal thrill ride through our subconscious." --Jeff "The Dude" Dowd, in his foreword "Calling all insomniacs! This collection of prose and poetry explores every aspect of darkness. From a discussion of Edward Hoppers Nighthawks to Sappho's reveries about nightingales and daybreak, Phil Cousineau leaves no stone unturned as he explores both the realities and the metaphors associated with the night." --Anna Jedrziewski, Retailing Insight "In this engaging, entertaining and edifying anthology of essays, poems, quotations, prayers, and philosophical ditties, Cousineau probes the multidimensional world of the night with all its treasures, mysteries, and delights [...] Anyone who has savored the pleasures of being a night owl will rejoice in the varied material in this paperback where 'noctivagators' (the night walkers) share their experiences of 'the Long Night's Journey Into Day.'" --Spirituality & Practice "Phil Cousineau's new collection is cause for rejoicing. He leads us on the long night journey, holding brilliant candles, flashlights, lanterns, spotlights, all made of glorious words, to illumine the hours. Wherever the night carries us, through waking dreams, sweats, worries, or raging sleeplessness, Phil Cousineau's elegant new work provides troubadour songs, thoughtful conversation, and sweet companionship to help us not only make it through the night but to find within its darkness a profound, dazzling beauty." --Peggy Rubin, author of To Be and How To Be: Transforming Your Life Through the Powers of Sacred Theatre "My night vision has been trebled! Essentially a day person, I feel vastly enriched journeying this dusk-to-dawn world, guided by those who have mined the dark hours with enthralling courage, curiosity, lyricism, spirituality, eroticism, humor, passion and honesty. No cursing the darkness here. Once again the candle-lighting Cousineau delivers new delights in the familiar, the exotic, the old, the modern, the high, the low--and the deliciously unclassifiable. " --Arthur Plotnik, author of Better Than Great and The Elements of Expression This kind of book is the kind you dip into, but I read it cover to cover, not wanting to miss an entry" --Daniel Goldin, Boswell Books "Wordcatcher stirs up...the delight that comes with finding the unexpected embedded within the familiar" --ForeWord Reviews, on Wordcatcher "All throughout my delightful role as Watson to Cousineau's Holmes (with great panache, of course), I felt the passion, the anticipation of joy and the rhapsody of the chase as I discovered the oftentimes secret origins and meanings of the most bewildering, the most astonishing, the most completely absurd, and even the most sardonic and contemptuous of words, and, finally, the wise and witty." --Christina Forsythe, Fresno Book Review, on Wordcatcher "Whether an unabashed wordnerd or a casual reader, a dictionary hound or someone looking to expand your own personal lexicon, there is plenty to interest you in Wordcatcher." --Glenn Dallas, Sacramento Book Review, on Wordcatcher "[Cousineau] is continually pushing the envelope in finding interesting topics to scrutinize" Helene Vachet, New Perspectives Magazine "Stake out a claim next to the standard dictionary you use for this less pedantic companion. It contains fewer words but sends up Fourth of July skyrockets on all of them. But caveat emptor, readers beware! Cousineau's love affair with words is contagious and you are likely to end up lovesick with words yourself" --Huston Smith "Wordcatcher allows us to remember the genius of language--to see, feel and, it seems, even "taste" the living-ness and poetry hidden within these many common and uncommon words. A delicious book." --Jacob Needleman