"HOSPITAL POEMS," an explosive new book portrays mental patients "shining with the light of humanity!"

What turns a person into a mental patient? How does a person land in a mental hospital over and over again? Poet Nancy Dunlop cannot answer those questions and yet she has written a phenomenal book called "Hospital Poems," poems about what it's like to find yourself in the company of troubled folks in psych wards.

The book is attracting wide attention, earning praise from poets and mental health practitioners alike.

"Hospital poems is a sensitive, brave and thoughtful look at the experiences of in-patient psychiatric care," notes Massachusetts psychotherapist Joan Burkhard. "The observation of the difficult experience of being 'in treatment' and away from the familiar was a touching read. I highly recommend!"

Poet Lori Anderson Moseman writes of Hospital Poems: "This is a brilliant book. A must-read. It will save lives."

Indeed, the book offers individuals suffering with suicidal tendencies a kind of emotional stone pillar upon which to lean. The book provides hope to all of those millions of people suffering from depression and anxiety. 

Dunlop meets some fascinating people during her repeated hospital stays. There is the ivory woman who says that her husband — dark as chocolate— was shot.  The ivory woman tells her story over and over again, each time in the same order.

There’s a “lurchy woman” whose meds make her into a “marionette” — Dunlop doesn’t learn her name but realizes that she too is prisoner of the sometimes brutal effects of psych drugs.

One young patient she calls the Kid is a brash know it all, taking direction from no one. As it happens, he loves poetry and Nancy — a college literature teacher — finds a way to put the brakes on him so that he finally sits down and listens.

In each of these keenly observed poems, Dunlop portrays a person in a unique struggle to survive a mental crisis or the soulless hospital environment.  But these are anything but depressing tales. Rather, “Hospital poems” is a short but deftly sketched set of portraits of people who shine with the light of humanity.

Nancy Dunlop may not be able to explain how a person turns into a mental patient but she knows exactly how to turn that mental patient back into a person.

Nancy Dunlop, who writes both poetry and essays, resides in Upstate New York. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in a number of print and digital journals, including Swank, alterra, Truck, Green Kill Broadsheet, The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge and 13th Moon. Her essays have also been broadcast on NPR. She earned her Ph.D. at UAlbany, SUNY, specializing in Creative Writing and Poetics. And she happily taught there, as well as at other institutions, for 25 years.

The book is published by INDIE BLUE PUBLISHING, a progressive, feminist micro-press, committed to producing honest and thought-provoking works.

To purchase "Hospital Poems," go to Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Hospital+poems+by+Nancy+Dunlop&crid=G4ROZM8RPW11&sprefix=hospital+poems+by+nancy+dunlop%2Caps%2C54&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

The book can also be purchased through Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, and other major online book retailers.

OH MAMAMMAMMAMAMA COME TO ME!!!!

 Editor's note: My great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, was born in November, 1870, in Paola, Italy. He was born out of wedlock. In those days, most babies born out of wedlock died in horrible foundling homes. Miraculously, Pasquale survived. However, his mother, my great great grandmother Filomena Scrivano, was not allowed to raise her son. Because of strict laws reinforced by the Catholic Church, all "illegitimate" infants were taken from their mothers. Pasquale was given the name "Orzo" -- like the pasta -- and he was raised by a foster mother, Annunziatta Sessa, another villager in the small town of Paola, in the southern region of Calabria. My great grandfather did know his mother, however, as she periodically paid him visits. In this chapter, Pasquale is about six or seven years old and he has just had a visit from his mother.

DOWN BELOW THE WINDOW I SEE YOU GO,

sotto la finestra ti vedo andare urlo per te

 I SCREAM FOR YOU

Urlo per te 

MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA

You stop, you pull the black shawl tight around your head and shoulders.

You turn, you raise your hand to wave. 

Your sad eyes stare up at me.

You kiss your fingers and you linger there

MAMA, you stand against the wall of the narrow cobblestone street

STONE THE COLOR OF EGG YOLK

pietra il colore del tuorlo d'uovo

The soft egg you fixed me.

Why can't I go home with you Mama?

Alessandra tells me,

young man, I can't explain this until you are older

Giovanotto, non posso spiergarlo finshe on sarai piu grande

Why does she say this to me?

All she will say is that some day I will understand.

Someday, she says, I will see why many children cannot be with their mamas.

I cannot see you out the window anymore.

I slide to the floor. The tears come easily. I put my face into my hands.

MAMAMAMAMAMA I can smell the lavender

Alessandra tells me to wipe my eyes.

Pulisciti gli occhi! 

She tells me to go with my stepbrother, Salvatore,

Go for a walk by the ocean, but come back for soup,

so we do,

                                    My great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, as a grown man. 

the two of us must hold hands she says,

him so tall, and me so small,

and we do hold hands until we are out from under her view.

Then Sal leads me through the narrow grey streets

he knows so well. We come to the center of Paola,

the church bells are chiming noontime.

The fountain in front of the church is dry. I stop.

I'm always looking for coins but there are never any to be found.

"Come on Pasquale," Sal calls and I run after him.

Soon we are on the sand and we take off our leather shoes

I am watching huge green waves rise and

crash on the beach. I want to run into the water, I want to splash the way

we do in the summer. I race as fast as I can to the water's edge

and Salvatore is screaming behind me

"Do you want to die you crazy little maccaroni boy?"

Vuoi morire ragazzo pazzo dei maccheroni?

I stop. I kick the sand. The sand gets in between my toes.

The wave crashes and crashes and the clear water snakes up to my feet. Cold!

I have never thought of dying before. I think of Mama, when she is squeezing me,

she is whispering

you are my life little man you are my life!

Sei la mia vita piccolo uomo sei la mia!

I can smell the lavender in her black hair

                                        My great great grandmother, Philomena Scrivano.

caught in a bun at the back of her head.

Suddenly I shout as loud as I can, MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA

I am dead without you!

Sono morto senza di te!

Salvatore is behind me. "What did you say?" he asks.

I turn toward him and he throws sand at me, and some of it lands in my eyes.

I scream, I use the word he always uses for me

BASTARDA BASTARDA!

He laughs. He points at me. He shakes his head and squeezes his nose as if I have a foul smell.

"No no no macaroni boy. Not me. You. You. You will alway be

Il bastardo Orzo!"

I don't know what he means 

but I know how I feel when he says it.

My chest is empty. I scream inside

OH MAMAMAMAMAMA COME TO ME! 

Marilyn Davis, You Are Sorely Missed

I haven't posted much lately because I've been busy doing other things -- painting, traveling, reading, gardening, meditating, chanting, canoeing, getting a new novel ready to publish, and sewing a myriad of doll clothes and other things for my beloved grandchildren.

But this morning, I have to write because I am fighting tears. I learned today that a woman I've known for many years as a writer and editor and friend passed away quite suddenly at the age of 74.  I realize this morning that I never really told this woman, Marilyn Davis, just how much respect and love I had for her.

I met Marilyn when I started submitting poetry and prose to a fabulous on-line literary blogsite called Two Drops of Ink. She always received my work with enthusiasm and placed beautiful images alongside my writing. 

But our relationship really flourished when she asked me to edit her wonderful memoir, Finding North: A Journey from Addict to Advocate." Marilyn's life story is quite remarkable. For many many years, she was a desperate woman on drugs, managing rock bands at night, pretending to be okay, but ultimately giving up on herself, losing her husband, children, family and friends due to her addiction.

The miracle is that all of that ended. She went into recovery and shortly afterward, at a recovery meeting in Georgia where she lived, she had a mysterious encounter with a Native American man named Grey Hawk. He revealed to her that while in a sweat lodge in Virginia, he had had a vision that he had to "quit his job as a counselor, pack his belongings and go to Gainesville, Georgia, where he would find the woman who would open a house of healing for other women."

That woman was Marilyn Davis! The night she met him, during a recovery meeting, she was walking away when in a booming voice he said, "You, wait!"

"Although I turned around to look at him, I didn't believe he was talking to me...There he stood, pointing in my direction...I finally stammered 'Are you talking to me?' He smiled and said, 'Yes, I have looked for you for twenty years, do not go now.'...I replied that he must have me confused with someone else - that we did not know each other. He laughed and told me that we did..."

She was dumbfounded. 

"I sat there, not knowing how to respond...How could he know me? Why did he think I had anything of value to give to other people to help them heal from their addictions? I was only ten months into recovery." 

It took a lot of convincing. 

Well, to make a long story short, Marilyn Davis opened that house of healing in 1990 and managed it until 2011. North House went on to become an award-winning facility. 

Marilyn reconciled with her parents, and her daughters. She became a grandmother to four grandchildren.

And she went on to have a rewarding writing life. She had two very popular blogs, Two Drops of Ink, and From Addict 2 Advocate. Besides Finding North, she published a TIERS Recovery Manual and the Memories to Memoirs Workbook.

But her most important work was giving hope and support and wise advice not only to thousands of recovering addicts, but also sharing her creativity with a huge writing community, of which I was fortunate to be part.

Dear Marilyn, I'm holding your book in my hand this morning, crying, hearing your wonderfully-raspy voice in my head. Most of all I am feeling such great love and respect for you in my heart. I am so so grateful that I was part of your amazing life!

P.S. Thank you ever so much for publishing my son Noah Kirsch's poem, "Spider," in January, 2022