Calendar Home
Previous Reading:
« SAMUEL GREEN
Next Reading:
JEANNE HEUVING »
|
|
Open Books: Event Archive
February 12, 2008 07:30 PM
LINDA BIERDS & SUZANNE PAOLA w/ THOM SCHRAMM
This evening's reading marks the publication of Living in Storms:
Contemporary Poetry and the Moods of Manic-Depression edited by Thom
Schramm ($23.95 Eastern Washington), an anthology of poetry concerned with
manic depression as it is experienced first-hand, or second-hand through the
experience of family and loved ones, or as it is imagined. Schramm points
out that "it would be a mistake to conclude, whether on the basis of their
poetry or the fact of their inclusion in this volume, that any of these
writers meets the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis." Two of the
contributors, Linda Bierds and Suzanne Paola, will be on hand to read, and
Schramm will offer some words about the topic and his selection process. An
example of depression's hold is found in Diana Chang's "A Dead Heart," --
"It is stony, / empty as a frame of light. // I try to breathe around it /
but I am its house. // In my eyes / an unmoving world. // It is close to
nothing. / I am too much." And mania's seduction finds, in Peter Cooley's
"Returning from the Shopping Center to the Suburbs," a driver who shuts his
eyes and takes his hands off the wheel, forcing an on-coming car to swerve
off the road, the poem closing, "I'm going to live forever, listener, / not
that you asked. And while we're at it, / how do you get through your life?"
This is an impressive and unusual gathering of intense, arresting poetry.
|
|
