About Reflections
For over 25 years Reflections was a printed poetry magazine that specialised in spiritual poetry in the broadest sense of the term. For many years after, it was published digitally and maintained an online presence until very recently. Some past issues are available to download HERE and will be added to from time to time.
These pages will provide a flavour of its output and an opportunity to explore the work of its contributors further.
Author, editor, poet and prominent follower of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teachings, Alan Jacobs was a regular contributor to the magazine. In 2000 he compiled an anthology of the magazine’s mystical poetry.
Alan’s introduction to the anthology follows below:
INTRODUCTION
Like most of the very best in this miraculous life, true gold is both hard to find and hard to mine. ‘Reflections’ is offered mainly to its subscribers and is not widely known by the general educated-public interested in what Shelley called ‘Higher Poetry’. As he wrote in his magnificent essay ‘A Defence of Poetry’
“A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight”.
The philosophy of Reflections is ‘egolessness’ and she does not wish to be a platform for self-interested personalities. All Higher Poetry, which is mystical in character comes from vision after the diminution, if not the abnegation of the petty obsessive self; so that the intuitions of the Real Self may flow through the poet’s trained mental equipment. The Editorial Board remain anonymous and so demonstrate this principle in action.
Mystical Poetry is an expression of the Soul’s yearning to be reunited with her Source. Reflections’ Poets follow the mainstream of classical English prosody, honouring structure, metre, quantity and often rhyme. This selection from nine years of successful publication is broadly chronological, and chosen to be representative of her poets’ work.
She is a happy counterbalance and antidote to much of the contemporary verse which deals with more mundane subject matter not generally to the public’s liking. Reflections’ Poets are musical – and sing!
Reflections is indeed an oasis in the desert of overworked free verse often indistinguishable from prose except for line breaks. Let all those who yearn for living waters, slake their thirst in her fountains and return; renewed and refreshed.’
Alan Jacobs
London, April 2000
The paperback edition can be found HERE.