TABLE OF CONTENTS![]() |
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Foreword | ix | |
Appreciation | xi | |
Introduction | 1 | |
Stage One - ENTRY![]() |
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1. | “Cleaveland” | 5 |
2. | The Three Pillars of Biblio/Poetry Therapy | 7 |
3. | Five Stages of Action Poetry Therapy | 14 |
Stage Two - ENGAGEMENT![]() |
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4. | Adolescents and The Little Prince | 29 |
5. | The Poet-Therapist Listens: Hearing the Healing Metaphor | 34 |
6. | In Honor of Psyche and Syntax | 43 |
7. | Out of Our Argument with Ourselves | 54 |
Stage Four - INCORPORATION![]() |
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8. | Poetry Therapy: A User Friendly Modality | 67 |
9. | Embodying the Learning with Alloprinciple Poetry | 71 |
10. | Biblio/Poetry Therapy in the Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder | 75 |
Stage Five - INITIATIVE![]() |
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11. | Museletter Interview | 87 |
12. | Wordscapes: The Art of Seeing the Invisible | 92 |
Afterword | 117 | |
Appendix—The Wordsworth Center Intensives | 119 | |
Glossary of Words Asterisked in Text | 127 | |
Index of Authors | 129 | |
References | 131 | |
About the Author | 137 | |
Stage Three
INVOLVEMENT
The involvement segment of a session, like the volta in a sonnet, is its turning point, its crux, alive with the possibility of fresh perspective. Involvement is the creative heart of the poetry therapy session. For me, it is the most demanding and provocative part. It challenges me to evoke deeper response by choosing and using literature that illuminates comparison and contrasts, and sparks lively interaction. I pose stimulating questions to tease out not only connection, but also opposition, often eliciting greater authenticity in thought and feeling expression. Within the session, it is the time when many participants become aware of the rich complexity they are made of, built upon their phases of growth and learning.
By speaking what they think and feel and interacting with fellow group members who also express their thoughts and feelings in relation to the literature and to each other, participants enhance identity and confidence.
Collage
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and though the stiff
flowers of lightning—some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
~ Mary Oliver from “One or Two Things” in Dream Work
Of all the terrible questions that Alice is asked in Wonderland,
the most terrible is puffed out by the hookah-smoking Caterpillar:
“Who are you?” As Alice knows, the question has no answer.
The only speck of the world that must remain invisible to us is
our self. In our own eyes, we can be nothing but looking-glass
images, always plural, the reflections that others send back to us
and that we incessantly make ours or reject.
~ Alberto Manguel