from the Kitsap Sun

Although the books I'm reviewing this week are vastly different in genre and tone, I was struck by what they have in common. Storms both literal and emotional are at their core . . .

Seattle poet Thom Schramm addresses turmoil of a different sort in a new anthology he has edited for Eastern Washington University Press.

In Living in Storms, Schramm has collected more than a hundred poems by some 80 contemporary poets whose lives have been affected in various ways by bipolar disorder.

The twin poems Schramm opens with, William Matthews' "Manic" and "Depressive," set the stage beautifully.

The specificities of experience contained in these and succeeding poems help to illuminate the bumpy emotional terrain of this widespread and often unfairly stereotyped condition. These poems range from the precarious peaks of ecstasy to the nearly unfathomable depths of despair.

The "storms" described in this anthology are potentially as deadly as those Craig warns against in Chronicles of Katrina. If only face masks and manual can openers were all it took to diminish the vulnerability to those furious chemical tempests in the brain!

Linda Bierds, Miriam Dyak, Suzanne Paola, and Lawson Fusao Inada are among the Northwest poets included in this affecting anthology.

— Barbara Lloyd McMichael