Cusack Handler’s prose reverberates with evocative imagery, insight and emotion, conjuring not only the physicality, mystery and allure of the Roman Catholic faith of the 1950s, but also the authentic intensity and vacillation of adolescent feelings. The story, constructed in slice-of-life fragments and steeped in the present tense, deepens the intimacy of this well-drawn, psychologically astute narrative.
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With this blog, I'm joining my lives, my loves: my profession as a poet and also as a psychologist. My belief in the psyche and the unconscious and the ways each get played out in our lives-with ourselves, with spouses, parents, children, friends.
In Orphans, poet psychologist Joan Cusack Handler explores our most primitive and essential relationships – those with our parents – our aging parents – particularly the intense ambivalence that stems from the truth of their impending death.
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