Summary:

At dental school. Dave pursued Dana, the amazing and only woman in his class. Now married, they share a high quality private practice and raise their three little girls: Lizzie, Stephanie, and Leah. The ordinary chaos in the office and home of a professional couple is constant, though not insurmountable, and they enjoy the dental dramas of their patients, the childrens’ distinctive personalities, and the challenges of parenting. For example, two year-old Leah suddenly decides Dave is the centre of her universe, she shrieks when her previous favorite, Dana, comes near. The parents handle it together calmly without jealousy.

But Dave notices his beautiful, moody wife is drifting away; more precisely, he thinks she is having an affair. To keep this fear out of the realm of reality and confrontation, he scrupulously directs all talk toward work and kids, until his life is bent around avoiding any serious conversation with her at all. The children are anxious. He grieves for the losses of little things in their shared lives.

But when the family is felled by flu, all other problems recede. In rapid succession, children and parents collapse with fever, chills, and misery. Dave is up several nights with Leah, then he is sick himself just as Stephanie and Dana fall even more seriously ill. Drunk with fatigue and terrified that Stephanie might die, he takes her to hospital. They all recover, and the world seems harmonious. Dave begins to think he had imagined his wife’s distraction until he is jolted back to his worry when Dana vanishes.

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In summer 1962, virgins Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting take their wedding supper in a hotel suite overlooking stony Chesil Beach on the Dorset coast. Married that afternoon, each is thinking of the bed in the next room. With only a little experience, Edward has waited patiently, but looks forward, enthusiasm mingled with apprehension over his performance. Florence however is revolted and even frightened by the thought of sex, but she does not dare to reveal her fears. They are both embarrassed by the hovering staff, and eventually leave the meal unfinished.

They proceed to the bed. Florence takes the lead which pleases and surprises Edward, but he does not know that she is doing so bravely, to confront the inevitable and get it over with. Their individual thoughts forward and backward through time rehearse their meeting, their love, and the awkward encounters with parents.

It does not go well. Florence races out of the room onto the darkened beach. Edward follows her and they try to talk. She suggests a celibate marriage. He is humiliated and angry. She walks away and he does not call her back. The marriage is annulled and in the last few pages, their lives race by--hers to musical success, his with only one regret.

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Twelve year -old Emaline is riding with her father as he discs their fields, when she sees her beloved dog Prince running dangerously close to the blades. In trying to stop him, she falls off the tractor and her leg is sliced almost completely through. In anger, her father shoots Prince and leaves home. She is rushed to hospital where a series of operations and treatments save her limb, although it is permanently shortened and she walks with a limp.

The fields need seeding. In desperation Emmy’s mother appeals to the local “mental hospital,” and Angus, the crazy man, arrives to help. Emmy is warned to stay clear of him, and neighbours gawk, but she begins to notice his special qualities. He quietly sows the fields with blue flax and yellow mustard rather than the unsellable wheat. He helps fit her with a built up shoe, and he is steadfast though frightened when falsely accused of theft. Yet some neighbours, like Harry Record, cannot adapt to Angus and believe that the family is taking risks. Just as Angus is the object of ridicule, Emmy is mercilessly teased for her deformity by Record’s son, Joey.

One night in a snowstorm both Joey and Angus disappear. Angus has been driven out of town and dumped by Harry Record, but he finds Joey lost in the storm and brings him home. Record refuses to accept his guilt and pleads not guilty. As the book ends Angus is more accepted, but a trial is looming, in which Emmy and Joey will have to give evidence against his father.

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In his Introduction, editor Thom Schramm puts the themes of this anthology into perspective. He notes that the moods associated with bipolar disorder are familiar to everyone. Moreover, the notion that artistic creativity is associated with psychological instability is widespread; in fact, it is almost a stereotype, ranging in time from Plato's depiction of poets as suffering from "divine madness" to contemporary examples, like Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell. However, it should be evident that, since we all experience periods of sadness and elation, it is no wonder that poets of all stripes, no matter how "stable" they might be, may evince these moods in their work.

Living in Storms presents an array of contemporary poems grouped to reflect mania and depression from different perspectives. The book has eight sections. In the first three, the poet himself or herself expresses what it is like to be susceptible to mania or depression ("How It Is"), the experience of being there ("In the Mood"), and the experience in retrospect ("Remembering the Episodes"). The next two sections contain poems that approach these moods from more of a distance, either looking at the sufferer from another's perspective, ("Characters") or at the influence of manic-depressive sufferers on those around them ("Family and Friends"). The following section is devoted to poems about artists who suffered from manic-depression ("Artists"). The last two sections contain poems that depict shifts from one mood to the other, either on a daily or general basis ("Daily Shifts") or seasonally ("With the Seasons").

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In this one act play, as a result of a new medication, a middle-aged woman named Deborah wakes up after spending nearly 30 years in a "coma." More precisely, she was in a dream-like state of unawareness or altered awareness that Hornby, her doctor, refers to as "a kind of Alaska."(p. 34) Deborah thinks that she has only been "asleep" for a short while, so she asks about her parents and sister, as if she were still the adolescent she remembers. Hornby assures her that her mind has been suspended all that time, although he has been at her side, fighting to keep her alive: "Some wanted to bury you. I forbade it." (p. 34)

 

Uncertain what to say, Pauline, Deborah's younger sister, now enters the hospital room. Hearing Pauline's news of the family, Deborah tries to comprehend what has happened, but it seems just too bizarre. Then Hornby reveals that Pauline has been his wife for more than 20 years. Deborah experiences the walls of her consciousness closing in, "Let me out. Stop it. Let me out. Stop it. Stop it." (p. 38) Suddenly, she returns to the conversation and summarizes everything she has heard. "I think I have the matter in proportion," she concludes.

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Fifteen-year-old Webber hits a young girl, seriously injuring her, while taking a little illegal driving practice with his indulgent grandfather. Webber, himself, is injured, and unlikely to return to the track team he has loved. He has trouble remembering the accident during the first weeks of his recovery, especially since his grandfather has determined to take the blame for the accident. But as memory returns, aided by the bitter insinuations of a classmate who babysits the injured girl, Webber is torn between accepting his grandfather's cover for the sake of a clean record and an unencumbered high school career, and confessing. The technical fact that his grandfather was legally responsible for letting him drive complicates the ambiguity of his dilemma. Ultimately, he makes the decision to confess. The book concludes with his telling his grandfather of his intention--a decision that is sure to be relationally as well as legally consequential.

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This latest collection of poems by Sharon Olds is fittingly dedicated to "our daughter and son." Centered on the intense experiences of marital love and parenthood, the book can be read as a (yet unfinished) life-cycle story that begins with the poet narrator’s own conception, birth, and childhood bonds with mother and sister (Part 1). The overpowering awareness of her adolescent sexuality, romantic attachments, and the growth to womanhood, culminating in pregnancy--her daughter’s beginnings--are the subject of the poems in Part 2.

Part 3 describes the birth of her daughter and son, and the deep love and anxieties of parenting, expressed in the small details of daily life and child care. The short Part 4 is a celebration of married love, both erotic and transcendent, and of the powerful emotional connections which are the "wellspring" of human lives--that spawn the children we bring into the world and that help us to love and care for them as well.

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Summary:

In the title poem, Jimmy Santiago Baca says: "To write the story of my soul / I trace the silence and stone / of Black Mesa." This collection of poems carries the reader into the mountains and valleys of northern New Mexico, and to the barrio where the poet and his family live. They are poems full of incident and experience, of the "twenty-eight shotgun pellets" that remain in "my thighs, belly, and groin" from an incident with Felipe in 1988 ("From Violence to Peace"), and the slaughter of a sheep to the tattoo of wild drums ("Matanza to Welcome Spring"), and the tragic story of "El Sapo," the Frog King.

Baca’s characters live close to the land, close to the mountains, and sometimes outside the law ("Tomas Lucero"). These poems witness to the violence and despair of barrio life, but also to its energy and joy. Baca’s hope continues "to evolve with the universe / side by side with its creative catastrophe."

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Summary:

In the Arctic, winter goes on for ten months every year. The cold temperatures penetrate every aspect of human life. Existence is a struggle. In the Canadian community of Rankin Inlet, an Inuit woman finds personal tragedy as abundant as the snow. Victoria is diagnosed with tuberculosis (puvaluq) as a child and sent to a sanatorium far south of home. Following treatment with medication and a thoracoplasty, she returns to her town years later. Victoria's experience has changed her view of the world but she quickly discovers that in her absence, the people and locale have transformed too.

She marries an outsider, John Robertson, who is a British businessman. His success and local influence allow him to arrange for a foreign-owned diamond mine to open in the area, and with it, a new hospital for the territory. The couple have three children - a son, Pauloosie, along with two daughters, Justine and Marie.

Victoria seems a magnet for misfortune. At age 16, she has a miscarriage. A fourth child dies during a complicated delivery. Her marriage is increasingly strained beyond repair. Victoria's father suffers a stroke and becomes demented. Her mother dies of lung cancer. Husband John is murdered - someone slits his throat. Marie commits suicide. Pauloosie leaves home and sails to the South Pacific.

The Robertson family frequently interacts with the American primary care physician stationed in the isolated region. Dr. Keith Balthazar is a middle-aged atheist who has toiled in the Arctic for more than 20 years and abuses morphine. He keeps a journal of his experiences and meditations and commiserates with the local priest, Father Bernard.

Escape appears to be the best chance at happiness. For Victoria and most everyone else living in this harsh and beautiful land, survival - both physical and emotional - is hard. Personal choices are confusing. Nature doesn't seem to care one way or another.

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Summary:

As the novel opens in 2002 we learn that the protagonist, Evan Patrick Molloy, has been wandering through a particular house and its yard for ten years, passing through its walls, unperceived by any of the people who have occupied the house. Evan is a ghost. The house he wanders through is the one he lived in when he deliberately put an end to his life by gunshot ten years earlier. It is the house he had lived in for a while with his ex-wife, Claudia after he resumed his relationship with her. Claudia's 10 year old daughter from a second failed marriage, Janey, lived with them. Several individuals and families have occupied the house since Evan's suicide. The current occupant is Maureen, who has moved there as part of her attempt to break off a relationship with her married lover, Ned, a radiologist.

Evan's story is revealed as flashback, interwoven with Evan's present-day fascination with Maureen and his watchfulness over her. The flashback chronology is not sequential but Maureen's life in the house and her interaction with Ned, who tracks her down, unfolds chronologically. As Evan thinks back on his life he tries to reconstruct the events, relationships, and state of mind that culminated in his suicide. At the same time, he wants to understand what is going through Maureen's mind and what motivates her actions. These two narratives merge at the end of the novel.

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