"Nashon Cook's Communion reads like the most delicate, deepest delving into the mysteries of existence: love and sex, hate and violence, life and death in a transcendent interweaving that can leave one crying and smiling all at the same timeless time. This book evokes for me the mystical poetry of the ancient Sufi poets Rumi, Hafiz, and Lala in which body/spirit are one, where the language of sensual love becomes the language of the holy fire and mystical communion outside any church or condemnation of a man who feels passion for other men as the I-narrator does. Herein also unfolds an exploration of various kinds of love, including friendship and mother-son connection. Like the Sufi poets, Nashon Cook whirls until his words become a whirlwind of naked poetry drawing the reader's heart into a similar ecstatic dance. Poetry doesn't get any better than that." --Susan Deer Cloud "In poems plainspoken and lovely, Nahshon Cook tells the human story: our need for one another and the many ways we hurt and heal, together and alone. History, joy, faith, death, revelation - Communion takes them all on with an understated grace, often through conversation, the human voice itself in relationship, in love. "by the time/I finish a poem//being alive/makes sense," the poet tells us. That's how I felt reading this moving collection." -- Sarah Browning, Director of Split This Rock and author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden
 "In Communion, Nahshon Cook "enters the silence of the sanctuary", a place made wholly by body and mind, meditation and action. Observant in all meanings of that word, these poems rely on the watchful eye and response of their narrator, a black gay man in the American West, where split-second decisions have devastating impact, where a new relationship hangs in the nave of past and future. Soft-spoken and self-assured short lines and long columns are these poems' form and hymn, a long conversation - or is it lamentation? with a congregation of sinners, sanctified, the dead and undead, dreams, and ultimately wonder, gratitude, and care." --Valerie Wallace, editor with RHINO and author of The Dictators' Guide to Good Housekeeping

Communion

Literature & Fiction

Cook, Nahshon

Poetry

Shabda Press

Nahshon Cook is a poet of witness whose work has been published widely. His poems safeguard memories of war, oppression, beauty, love and hope. The Killing Fields And Other Poems documents his two-and-a-half year stay in Asia. He lives in Denver, Colorado. "Nahshon Cook's The Killing Fields is a magnificent map of poems. These powerful and quiet poems lead us on a poetic journey through Cambodia, China, Nepal, Thailand, and America. They also beckon us toward an interior human journey. We meet lepers and angels, dancers and lovers, monks and mothers. These intricately crafted poems are both the road and the signposts. They map a way of compassion that observes and hopes. On the nights you can't pray, just take out this book. These poems will point you in the right direction." -- Joseph Ross, author of Gospel of Dust and Meeting Bone Man "Nahshon Cook's poetry is heart wrenching but beautiful. To read his words is to be lifted from your luxuries and comforts by the talons of a hawk and dropped into a valley full of mirrors where you must face your own humanity and absence of it each time you turn around." -- Jason Hardung, author of The Names of Lost Things and The Broken and the Damned

The Killing Fields and Other Poems

In Being With Horses, Nahshon Cook shares with readers, his alternative universe where horses are magicians, miracles-makers, and healers teaching him how to help his students quiet their minds enough to re-awaken their intuition. \nWith simplicity and inspiring wisdom, Nahshon Cook explores how being with horses can help people learn to find the little pieces of beauty in the broken moments of joy that keep us grounded in life enough to make life worth living. \nWhen not always being OK is OK, people are able to grieve and also sing and dance and remember and offer their own two human hands to the collective piecing together of a more wholistic hearts-space of consideration and healing for ourselves, each other, and all life in the earth.

Being With Horses

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Pets & Animal Care

Nova's Books

When we acknowledge how much of our lives horses hold for us, we realize how much horses have to teach us about ourselves. Horses See Us As We Are is an exploration of the incredible, grace-filled invitation that horses are always extending to us when we allow them to be more than jet skis with heartbeats that are just ridden around for fun. Horses are worth more than what we pay for them. 
When we accept that invitation, horses help people become human beings by teaching us how to listen as an act of love that has the power to hold space for hurt hearts to heal, and for healed hearts to grow in relationship with others in a life-giving way. I go into greater detail about that in the introduction. So, please read the introduction. 
Nahshon Cook is an author, poet, and first generation horseman from Denver, Colorado. Nahshon graduated with a Bachelors of Sciences degree in Human Services from Metropolitan State University. As a horseman, Nahshon interests lay in working with horses with major mental, emotional, and physical training related trauma. He is the author of Being With Horses. He lives and works out of his family's farm in Parker, Colorado where he uses his background in classical dressage and rehabilitation to help horses and their people.

Horses See Us As We Are

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cook, Nahshon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cook, Nahshon

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cook, Nahshon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Communion

The Killing Fields and Other Poems

Being With Horses

Horses See Us As We Are