I’ve been asking myself why I wanted to revitalize this blog. There were several reasons for my disappearance, not the least of which was the loss of a devoted friend who was my partner when I started CavanKerry Press. Absorbing all of my focus, my life-giver in the face of this loss became my latest...
As you my readers know, I love poetry and all the nuance, paradox and emotion conveyed by the magical manipulation of words. When I heard from Joan, a native of the Bronx, raised in an Irish family, I was captivated by the idea of a memoir in verse.
And so I asked Joan if she would like to write...
In The Dry Months
By Lucas Hunt| June 23, 2016 – 11:58am
Joan Cusack Handler
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
— from “Gerontion” by T.S. Eliot
While it is a truth that anyone who lives to old age will experience inevitable deterioration,...
I posted this East Hampton Star review last week. What follows is my response to a question raised in the first paragraph (I’ve included it below) which ultimately concerns all of us and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
While it is a truth that anyone who lives to old age will experience inevitable deterioration,...
An Unexamined Life Stage
by Joan Cusack Handler, Ph. D.| April 18, 2016
I’ve been a psychologist in clinical practice for more than 30 years. Not surprisingly, I’m also a writer who focuses on the emotional and psychological underpinnings of human experience. Committed to meticulously preserving client...
Now that Orphans is published and no longer mine alone, I’m feeling a bit lonely. I don’t have my ‘baby’ to tend to anymore (and that truly is a loss after so many months/(years!!) of obsessing,) and I certainly don’t have my next project in mind nor do I have room for it emotionally–that will...
NIN ANDREWS
Orphans is such a powerful and heart-breaking memoir. I thought maybe I’d start the interview by asking for an excerpt from “No Day Was Brighter:” on page 39, beginning on page 39: “I’ve spent my life trying to explain/my mother . . . and ending with “God stealing her mother in every /face...
I can count on my one hand the women I know—friends or patients—whose relationship with their mothers is not the root of their most troubled selves. Virtually every woman I know has a complex relationship with her mother. (The same is true with men and their fathers, but it’s mother and daughter that...
This is part an essay I wrote for The Tampa Review titled, “Poems and the Psyche: The Threat of Making Art, One Writer’s Journey.” You can see the full series here.
Before ending, (or perhaps the better word is interrupting), this ongoing discussion of voice, which began with a gift from Allen Ginsberg...