Nelson Gary
AN INNOVATIVE SPIRITUALITY BOOK
ABOUT NELSON GARY
Nelson Gary's works include XXX (Dance of the Iguana Press), Cinema (Sacred Beverage Press), A Wonderful Life in Our Lives: Sketches of a Honeymoon in Mexico (Low Profile Press), Twin Volumes (Ethelrod Press), Sourav Sarkar & Nelson Gary Poems (Common Literature Period), and Pharmacy Psalms and Half-Life Hymns—for Nothing (Mystic Boxing Commission). He is an award-winning essayist and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee (poetry). His prose and poetry have been published internationally in numerous journals, magazines, anthologies, and newspapers, including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder's Mouth Press), Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, BlazeVOX, Behar Cooch Anthology, Americans and Others: International Poetry Anthology, El Observador, Los Angeles Times, and Desert Sun. Gary read at Lollapalooza in 1994, had a residency at The Mint with Ivan Neville's All-Star Band, and recorded his poetry with Elliott Smith ("Coast to Coast") on the latter's album From a Basement on the Hill. At Heroin Times, his journalism helped thousands, if not millions, of people addicted to opioids find and sustain recovery. Through a period of many years, he has worked as a counselor and program director at drug rehabilitation programs. He has also taught Kundalini yoga. Nelson Gary has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from California State University at Northridge and a Master of Arts degree in Forensic Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. He lives with his wife and two Siberian huskies in California.
IN THE PRESS
OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE
On April 23, 2025, Mystic Boxing Commission published PHARMACY PSALMS AND HALF-LIFE HYMNS—FOR NOTHING by Nelson Gary, a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. This fearlessly transparent work elegizes Gary’s mother and father-in-law, grandmother, and 17 friends who died within nine months. The book explores mourning as a holistic, healing process in which Gary introduces new perspectives on dying, death, loss, and grief, which culminate in spiritual rebirth.
Gary described the volume as “a narrative of blues songs for dark nights of the soul at the crossroads.” A master of what the Greeks called theia mania (“divine madness”), Gary documents his journey through bipolar disorder, addiction, and recovery, sharing what’s helped and what hasn’t. One of PHARMACY PSALMS’ themes is voiced in these recurring lines: “Poetry without psychology is too dangerous. / Without poetry, psychiatry has much less purpose.” The text’s frame story follows Gary’s master studies in forensic psychology.
He introduced uncertainty as a new ultimate concern to existential psychology and a clinical intervention that integrated Viktor Frankl and Erik Erikson’s theories. These innovations in psychology structure a notable amount of PHARMACY PSALMS’ spiritual content.
Listening as a clairaudient to the voices of the living and dead as they are communicated through Sophia, Wisdom, the World Soul and a fold of the Biblical, sevenfold Holy Spirit, whose pancultural address he transcribes, the volume fuses personal memories with egoless empathy for the multitudes to sound. Over 100 pages of endnotes identify chorus members’ words that Lady Wisdom sings through Gary.
PHARMACY PSALMS explores the proverbial thin line between mystical revelation and dangerous delusion, highlighting how experiences often misdiagnosed as psychoses form the essence of civilization’s religious and poetic heritage. In the United States, roughly 22.8 million prescriptions for antipsychotic medications were filled in 2021, and this number has increased in subsequent years. Gary’s spiritual practice spans Greek oracular traditions, shamanism, Tamil Siddha twilight language, Hinduism, Kundalini yoga, Tantra, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, Ìṣẹ̀ṣe, and Judeo-Christianity, particularly its mysticism. As a spiritualist who has a master’s degree in forensic psychology and hasn’t had a manic episode since 1998, Gary’s experiential vision is as unique as it is essential in healing the increasing global mental health crisis.
Initially inspired by visitations to his dying, formerly trafficked mother, PHARMACY PSALMS grew into an elegy for many, a spiritual warfare epic, and the love story between visible Gary and invisible Wisdom. It climaxes in Gary’s quest to confront his mother’s trafficker.
EXCLUSIVE LIVE READING
UPCOMING EVENTS
No events at the moment
