Rosicrucian in the Basement Poetry Author:Robert Sward Rosicrucian in the Basement is a book of poems about Dr. Irving M. Sward, born about 100 years ago in Poltava, Russia, into an Orthodox Jewish family. A conservative, rather stern, five-eyelet shoe, white-shirt-and-tie, 9-to-5 pogrom-surviving immigrant, Dr. Sward became a successful Chicago podiatrist. After his wife's death he became a devout ... more »Rosicrucian, a member of a society venerating the rose and the cross as symbols of Christ's resurrection and redemption and claiming various occult powers. Robert Sward's poems, based on his father's life, capture the tension between a profession where one does something with one's hands - performing surgery on feet, cutting corns, carving arch supports - a trade in a sense, and talking with angels, seeing the two worlds: visible and invisible and how seven-eighths of everything is invisible anyway.« less