Though organized as a chronicle, individual poems in this collection stand alone; each is well-crafted, most about a page in length, and they vary in voice and point of view.  Their interest value is emphatically both medical and literary.  The titles are starkly descriptive ("Poem in Which Paranoia Strikes at the Grocery Store") or allusive ("Beggar at the Feast") or provocative ("No," "Too Much").   Many of the lines are memorable for their clarity and candor, like this one about emerging from a catatonic episode:  "I was sorry when they cured / me, when I had to depart that warm box, / the thick closed-in place of not-caring, / and return to the world."  Or this about learning to discount delusions:  "Doubt everything you think is both ‘secret' and ‘certain.'"  The collection allows readers into intimate space with dignity and authority.  By the final page, one has learned something significant about what it is to live with schizophrenia and its costs.