Kirjahaku

In The Glass is Already Broken, a mother navigates the decades-old loss of her son: "I keep trying to feel who I was before you / died. Listen to music I listened to then, Beatles, / The Band, Rolling Stones," she insists, before admitting "I can't / put the snake's skin back around its flesh, / the snow back into the sky." But what she can do is its own wonder: she shatters open a life centered on marriage and motherhood to reclaim her primal identity underneath. She revisits her choices. These poems grieve but they also reckon, bargain, riddle and joke, lust and croon, with every mode accented by a fine-hewed lineation. Reading these poems, and re-reading them, wrecked me in the best possible way.-Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode About the AuthorSharon Charde has six published poetry collections, taught incarcerated girls poetry for sixteen years, and wrote a memoir about that work, "I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent," published by Mango in June 2020. She has received many awards for her poetry, seven Pushcart nominations and numerous fellowships, among them Yaddo, Ucross and MacDowell. A retired psychotherapist, she lives in Northwest Connecticut with her husband of fifty-seven years.

Letting It Go—A Bereaving Mother, Delinquent Girls, and the Power of Rehabilitative Poetry Therapy"Anyone who has suffered and cares about our world (that probably includes everyone) will be moved and changed by this book.” -Elizabeth Lesser, author of the New York Times bestseller Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow Experience the poignant real-life story of how author Sharon Charde was saved by her relationship with incarcerated young women at Touchstone, a residential all-female treatment center in Litchfield, Connecticut. And, learn how these young women—confined for crimes such as using drugs, truancy, assault, prostitution, and running away—were rehabilitated by their poetry teacher. Letting go of grief and loss by writing poetry as therapy. I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent is a book for fans of the acclaimed movie Stand and Deliver. After the death of her child, a grief-stricken psychotherapist, teacher, and writer volunteers as a poetry teacher at a residential treatment facility for “delinquent” girls. Here, their mutual support nourishes and enriches each other, though not without large quantities of drama and recalcitrance. As Sharon and the girls share their losses through weekly writing, they came to realize their unlimited potential and poetic talents. Healing from trauma. Healing can come in surprising ways across age and social class, as it did for both the girls and Sharon. But what happens when Sharon finally grasps that the most challenging experiences are the best teachers? Narrated in five parts, the book also contains poems written by the girls, as well as excerpts from their writing, Sharon’s son’s writing, and her own. If you have read books such as Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, The Freedom Writers Diary, Between the World and Me, So You Want to Talk about Race, or Reviving Ophelia; you will love I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent.

In Branch in His Hand, a boy falls to his death and a mother sings a requiem in poems. The reader will not ever forget the Italy that he loved, or the wall from which he fell. Charde takes us to Italy, to the wall: A fissure in the wall like / a wound . . . and to the sea, in search of healing. In these brutally honest, beautiful poems, we face the death of one who is dearly loved, and recognize, as the poet says, that grief is at least part of what you / will grow into.--Pat Schneider, author, Writing Alone and With Others, Oxford University Press, and founder, Amherst Writers & Artists.