A stunning collection of poetry on disability, addiction, grief, and hope, by award-winning poet, Janet I. Buck
In "Calamity's Quilt," Janet I. Buck addresses the constitution of universal grief and proves, in poem after poem, that "confessional" writing is a stepping stone to comprehension and acceptance. Art is a tool for catharsis, a celebration of difference, and the meat of survival. There are no untouchable subjects in this book: she copes with amputation, addiction, familial complexity, and even death. There is unabated honesty here. From page to page to page, she is, in her own words, "scratching suffer's fingernails against the promise of the light."
Professional Reviews
A Quilt of Grief
"Janet I. Buck describes the medical madness of the modern world and creates powerful poetry that literally made me fall from my chair."
~Moshe Benarroche
Calamity with Vision
"Janet Buck writes from life, from reality. Her writing is not cutsy workshop exercises or flowery language, but raw emotion poured forth, calmly recollected just enough so Wordsworth would be proud, with a strength and validity that only comes from the debt of living fully."
~Thomas Fortenberry, ed.
The Radiance of Calamity's Quilt
"Calamity's Quilt is a collection of poetry that tilts the heart. Buck's very life is a metaphor for the human condition; she examines the constancy of pain, she explores the caprice of bad luck, she dissects the afflictions that come to all of us humans. Only someone who has lived through the torment of unyielding physical assault, only someone who has achieved compromise with death, only such a woman can write with this authority. Buck has over and over whispered psalms to us, to those of us still trapped, here, in the teeming, psalms describing how the task of life is not the avoidance of suffering, but rather the response to suffering. This, she tells us, is how life can be a radiance."
Ward Kelley
Life from reality is the best that I know at the moment, I intend to improve and grow, not just in my writing that is the least of it. This sounds like something that I would really like.
