Summary:

Shakespeare compares the directionality and rhythmic quality of waves to the natural life cycle: "nativity . . . / crawls to maturity", and to the relentless nature of time. Although death is eventually inevitable, the poet's tone is not one of fear or frustration, but of calm acceptance and the hope that his "verse shall stand."

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The aging narrator identifies strongly with his apparently young and beautiful love. He also believes that the love within his heart keeps his beloved youthful. The sonnet considers how humans perceive the aging process in themselves by observing it in those they love.

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Wordsworth describes his respect for an elderly female friend. Her wrinkles, grey hair, white cheeks, and bent head bring to mind a snowdrop. Like her, the delicate flower that blossoms on snow-covered mountains is a child of winter that prompts thoughts of gentle demise. Aging and death are compared to the moon growing brighter as night grows darker. Old age refines people into something more pure and exquisite.

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The King begins to make bad judgments: he "retires" from the worries of kingship, but expects to retain the privileges; he divides the kingdom, something every king knows better than to do; he banishes his only honest daughter and his most loyal advisor. Lest the reader not get the significance of these actions, they are mirrored in the actions of one of his royal party, Gloucester.

Nature announces impending trouble and the aging king reveals the magnitude of his dementia in a scene of violent delirium. The complex conspiracies among the sons and daughters of the king and Gloucester eventually lead to the violent deaths of most of the principles, clearing the way for an establishment of a new stewardship for the kingdom.

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The narrator observes an old, poor woman "who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia." now in a state of advanced deterioration. The poem expresses the poignancy of watching a decayed life from the perspective of memory; it ends with an affirmation of human dignity.

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A wonderfully descriptive three-stanza poem about the icy perils of a winter walk, especially for "the claudicators, the lace- / boned, the seven-months-pregnant, and the lame." The poet juxtaposes the ludicrous (teetering, wobbling, toppling), with the serious, the "spry" with the infirm. One comfort in this situation is that it threatens everyone who ventures outdoors and there is a camaraderie and mutual empathy among those who are struggling to remain upright. [18 lines]

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The scene is a sickroom in which the narrator stands at his dying sister's bed. He wishes that she could be "snatched up / to die by surprise" without ever knowing about death. The sister speaks, "I am in three parts." One is red for pain, one is yellow for exhaustion, and the other is white: "I don't know yet what white is."

The narrator stews for a while in his fears of dying, but his sister speaks again, saying that she is not afraid, but, "I just wish it didn't take so long." "Let's go home," she suddenly says, and he recalls images of their youth, and these images shuttle back and forth into the sickroom until at the end of the poem, "they ratchet the box holding / her body into the earth . . . " [79 lines]

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The author first presents an introduction and rationale for the concept of using creative writing as therapy, either self-prescribed or as part of professional treatment. She then provides practical guidelines for starting a journal (Chapter 3), and for beginning to write poetry, fiction, and autobiography (Chapter 7).

The text includes an accessible introduction to images and metaphors--aspects of the craft--as well as to methods of capturing dream material (Chapter 6) for use in one's creative writing. The later chapters present therapeutic writing in various contexts--as group work (Chapter 9), or in various institutional settings (hospital, nursing home, hospice, and prison). There are examples of therapeutic writing, especially poetry, throughout the book.

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There are two characters in this poem. One is the man with Parkinson's disease, who is being fed: "He will not accept the next morsel / until he has completely chewed this one." The man stands, shuffles to the toilet, pees, and then has his diaper changed. The second character is his daughter, who does the feeding and "holds his hand with her other hand, / or rather lets it rest on top of his." The daughter helps her father to the bathroom and "holds the spout of the bottle / to his old penis." On the way back, as she walks backward in front of him, "she is leading her old father into the future."

Wait a second! A third character--the subject, "I"--suddenly appears on this intimate scene. Near the end of the poem the invisible "I" turns the reader's attention to himself: "I watch them closely: she could be teaching him / the last steps that one day she may teach me." [64 lines]

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This is a brilliant reconstruction of a most improbable event: the major contributions made to the great Oxford English Dictionary by a deeply delusional, incarcerated 'madman,' and the development of a true friendship between him and the editor of the dictionary. One sees here the redemptive potential of work and love in even the most deeply psychotic patient.

Incongruously the patient is an American physician who was discharged because of service-related mental instability from the U.S. Army after the Civil War and received a pension for life. He went to Europe to seek relief of his delusional symptoms and ended up killing a man. Judged to be criminally insane, he was institutionalized at the newly built showpiece of the British penal system, the Asylum for the Criminally Insane, Broadmoor. While there he read an advertisement requesting volunteer help in reading specific books and making word lists and describing how the words were used in the books for the preparation of the new Oxford English Dictionary.

Over the next twenty years Dr. Minor, who was a voracious reader and had accumulated a large library, became the greatest contributor and maintained a lively correspondence with the famous editor, Dr. James Murray. For these many years they never met and Dr. Murray did not suspect that Dr. Minor was insane and institutionalized. After their meeting they became friends. The institutional care appeared to be very humane and Dr. Minor was a special patient in many ways, yet never regained his normal demeanor.

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