My Own Favorite Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781977246981)

The spirit-defeating, life-dissolving, often unavoidable personal doom of mental illness is poised to strike at so many of us - either directly upon ourselves or indirectly upon a loved one -during our existence here. It is these grim scenarios and outcomes, especially those limiting or destroying personal life events, that the author has struggled with personally through nearly all of her life. Experiencing and thinking on such grim scenarios would perhaps be expected to elicit writings that would be quite dark, an outpouring of tragedy and grief on self and life events. It is likely that this compact solid volume of her own creative energy and force is, in some part, the manner in which she has herself done battle with her diagnoses, a manner of enacting her own therapy when little, or none, was available to her. And it is here that the reader may begin to realize the special nature of this author's abilities that have given delight and uniqueness of this volume.

The reader will, of course, note that there are Chapters within this work that provide the authors singular insight in these areas such as "Poems about Grief (Chapter 5) and "Poems about Mental States and Stages" (Chapter 6). But, as the reader shall see, these sections may be viewed to serve only as contrasts to entire sections given over to positive, bright and delightful interpretations of life as "Favorite Things" (Chapter 1) and "Joyful and Tender Things" (Chapter 4). These are where the reader can read and be delighted with such literary ruminations and conundrums in "A Joy to Want" (Chapter 9), or the pensive and satisfying phrasings in "I Wonder Why" (Chapter 3), the wondrous stirrings of desire in "Ronnie" (Chapter 7), or even the hilarious musings in "In Response to Graffiti" (Chapter 9). It is anticipated that the reader of this work will be provided an uncommon clarity about how creativity and imagination may serve well in providing a transformative use cover