Shivani Mehta has just published an amazing book of prose poems, Useful Information for the Soon-to-be Beheaded. As with all good poetry I can’t really explain these poems, but Shivani’s language and images simply soar.  Girls with voices of glass, memories are “as thick as sails against the horizon”, and “…the closing of my mouth around each bird is affectionate,a welcoming home, eating beauty.” Some of the poems are entitled “Letter to Grandmamma” and numbered, and are as wild as the others but they end with lovely, more ordinary lines about children. “The children are having a marvelous time. Charlie wants to be a dolphin. I’m encouraging him to practice whenever he can.”

Leaving the Hall Light On by Madeline Sharples is a memoir about the most wrenching subject possible – the suicide of her son after his seven year struggle with bipolar disorder. I have to admit I put off reading this for awhile because of the subject, but  Madeline’s tone is so direct, honest, and lacking in self-pity, and the narrative, even though you know what’s going to happen, is so compelling and gripping, that it turns into a book you don’t want to put down once you start reading. It’s also the story of how a family survives this tragedy, how Madeline saves herself and finds a balance of keeping her son’s memory alive yet moving on in her own life. The ending is beautiful; her other son’s wedding eleven years later.

Both these books are available on Amazon and worth reading.