Poet, author, and editor Jill Bialosky frames her brilliant memoir through the poems that shaped her life. In doing so, she introduces the reader to a range of poetry, teaches about reading poetry, and offers hope.

Bialosky organizes her book around fifty-two poems from a range of poets including W. H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and others. Each chapter is framed around a certain moment in Bialosky's life, from childhood experiences to being in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. Then, there are reflections on these experiences that relate to the pomes chosen. Then, she offers what can be best described as a literary criticism of the poetry.

I remember feeling like I would never understand poetry. My written reflections on a poem always seemed to fall short in the eyes of some of my high school teachers. I always seemed to miss some powerful truth that was being communicated.

Bialosky made me feel better.

She skillfully weaves literary criticism with her own life experience revealing that the powerful truth hidden within a poem was hidden within the reader.

Poetry categorized into a life. A wonderful mix of story-telling, highlighted by the greatest poets of our lives. I thoroughly loved this concept!

This type of literary memoir is a subgenre that seems to be gaining popularity in recent months. I enjoyed reading about the poems and the reflections or memories that accompany each one.

Poetry will Save Your Life by Jill Bialosky is a memoir of the authors life in poems. Each chapter has a poem as a heading and tells how the specific poem impacted the author or what was happening in tne life of the author at the time she first heard the poem. I wasn't aware of all of the poems in this book and enjoyed finding out about poems I've never read before. If you love poetry or books about books then Poetry Will Save Your Life is for you.

Jill Bialosky has found a creative way to write about her personal experiences and make them interesting to a wider audience. If you are a poetry enthusiast, you will enjoy reading her memoir, Poetry Will Save Your Life.

I must admit that poetry has never really spoken to me, so there a few poems that I have learned over the years, mainly for school assignments that I recognized in this book. There are a few that brought back fond memories of my mother, because she did like poems and Robert Louis Stevenson, who is ddquoted int his book was one of her favorites. "My Shadow" and "The Swing" were poems my mother loved to recite to me when I was a child.

Bialosky writes each chapter in this book about different stages and experiences in her life. In each instance she uses a poet and their poetry to relate to her frame of mind and emotions in those circumstances. It is interesting that there is a poet and poems to fit all different situations in life. When you are happy or sad, about marriage and loss of a pregnancy and even suicide. Though looking at the book as a whole, there are more poems about the unhappy experiences in life than the happy ones, or do we just look for something to fulfill us when we are down?

Growing up Jewish Bialosky even can relate to the psalms and poems of Jewish poets for inspiration and soloace. She quotes Psalm 23, "The Lord Is My Shepard..." which we are all so familiar with and the Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, who as a child immigrated from Germany under Hitler's regime, to Palestine with his Orthodox family. His poetry including, My child blossoms sadly", "carries the anguished reverberations of history and politics", says Jill Bialosky.

Though we do not share the same favorite poets, Bialosky says in an interview that her favorites are Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and Wallace Stevens, this was an interesting quick book to read. If you are moved by the poems she has chosen you may even enjoy it in a more personal way than I did.

There were times in the reading of this book that I wanted to built an extensive library of poetry and immerse myself in it. The author's personal stories are often dark. The book seems to end abruptly.

In the end, the book was both more and less of what I thought it would be.

In "Poetry Will Save Your Life, "the poet Jill Bialosky refines the popular biblio-memoir and takes it in a new direction.  Instead of describing her favorite fiction, Bialosky is in love with poetry. She pairs her beautifully-detailed  personal vignettes about life with poems that help her parse emotions and experiences. Each poem is followed by a short literary analysis.  And it is a joy to discover or rediscover poems by the likes of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Denis Johnson, and many more.

Bialosky, who has written poetry, novels, and a memoir of her sister’s suicide,  is a master of lyricism.  Her imagery is crystalline and perfectly-wrought, and yet her style manages to be both evocative and earthy. She writes about her girlhood, college days, about building a life in  New York, and her compassion for  her mother.  Many of the short chapters are almost novelistic. I told my husband,  “If Betty Smith had been a poet, 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' would read like this.” (Only in Bialosky’s case, the Tree would have grown in Cleveland.  And in my husband’s case, he didn’t care where the tree grew.)

Bialosky grew up in the Midwest with her beautiful, warm widowed mother and two sisters,  one of whom tragically committed suicide. She discovered poetry “when my fourth grade teacher, Miss Hudson read us Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”  Later, poetry helped her cope with her move to New York, her doubts that she would ever marry, and her difficulty in starting a family.  Poetry is the constant in her life.
In the preface, she  says poems are “like a map to an unknown city.”

"For years I’ve flagged poems in individual volumes or anthologies with paper clips and Post-its. I have xeroxed poems and stuck them on my refrigerator or on bulletin boards. I have collected poems as someone else might collect stamps or coins or works of art—amazed by the many human experiences, large and small, that find their meeting place in poems."

As she walks on the beach alone in December, feeling lonely because her son is away at college, she  thinks of William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud.”  In the early ’80s, when she is overwhelmed by the anonymity of New York City, she remembers a poem by Gerard Stern, “The Red Coal,” which tells the story of two poets in Pairs who are walking and talking about Hart Crane and Apollinaire.  When she loses hope that she will fall in love, she recites Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed and Where, and Why.

I was moved by her description in “Legacy” of her disappointed mother, who had thought she would be a happily married housewife.  In the chapter “Legacy,” Bialosky writes,

"After my mother’s divorce from her second husband, my sisters and I try to push my mother. We urge her to take classes, find a job, and for a time she works as a receptionist, sells real estate, then works in retail, but there is a layer of fatigue and resentment underneath it all. It’s as if she feels she’s still entitled to the life she was meant, but there’s no husband at home taking care of her. "

I wept, because I was thinking about my mother, who died four years ago.  She too lost her dream after my father divorced her.  She lived a full life, but was alone.   She never remarried after my father divorced her. She once told me the best days of her life were when my siblings and I were small and we were all together.  This broke my heart.   She lived a long, full life, but after my father left worked at menial jobs  and office jobs (I was very upset when I saw her working as a cashier at a drugstore) even though she had a bachelor’s degree.  She did live a full life, with her bridge clubs and other social engagements, but I know she was lonely.  Bialosky compares our mother’s expectations of our own generations’. Strange how just a few decades can make a differende.  Reading Lucille Clifton’s “Fury” and Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”  empowers us in that chapter.

A very moving book, with something for everybody.  It could be read for comfort, or as a textbook for a comp class or a poetry class.

I will certainly reread it.

Jill Bialosky gives us a highly readable and well-written memoir which ties the stages of her life to the poems that were important to her then and remain important to her to this day. I love this concept!! This book reminded me of how valuable poetry is as an artform, and makes me determined to bring it back into my life again.

Well done, Ms. Bialosky, well done!!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am one of those people who love poetry. I love to listen to others read poetry, recite poetry, sing poetry – it doesn’t matter. I love to read poetry on my own. When I taught high school, I tried with all my might to get my students to experience poetry in a way that would shape them. This is because I believe words have power, and poetry is essentially a way to put this power to use in a moving way.

I have memorized my favorite lines from poems. I cannot identify a single favorite poet or poem because there are just too many. By love for poetry and my belief in its power is what drew me towards Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir by Jill Bialosky. I believe in the title, so why wouldn’t I give this book a chance?
I’m glad I did. This memoir is unusual. It is organized around themes rather than a memoir structured chronologically. In this novel, Bialosky identifies poems relating to life experiences (also thematic) such as death. She describes in vivid detail when she remembers hearing the poem or responding to it for the first time. For instance, in the chapter “Danger,” she discusses two poems in relation to her childhood friend who ends up on a dangerous life path.

In addition to relating a life experience with a poem, she also analyzes the poem in detail. This means she explains how the poem works and the techniques the poet uses in relation to her it impacted her life. This stood out to me as a former English major and former English teacher because this is what I do. I tried to show my students how these poetic devices were used to make poetry more meaningful – and yet, it allows readers to make their own meaning. She also includes information about the poet, which I also appreciated.

I also really like how this book does not have to be read cover to cover. You can certainly read it this way, but you can also choose to just read Bialosky’s reflections on certain poems in relation to her life. It is a book that you can read through slowly working your way through one chapter at a time.

This is a book poetry fans will love to have on their shelves. English teachers will also be able to easily include sections of this memoir into their curriculum.

Poetry Will Save Your Life

A Memoir



by Jill Bialosky

Atria Books

Biographies & Memoirs

Pub Date 11 Jul 2017

I am reviewing a copy of Poetry Will Save Your Life through Atria Books and Netgalley:

This book reminds us of what it is like to fall in love with Poetry. The author talks about falling in love with poetry, while in fourth grade reading The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, the poem that first started my love for poetry as well. She talks about the parallels in her life and the poem.

She goes on to talk about Gwendolyn Brooks poem We Real Cool seared through her memories.

She goes on to talk about Star, the poem by Jane and Ann Taylor the nursery rhyme is based on takes her back to loosing their Minitature black poodle that sadly was never found.

She goes on to talk about reading poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. She talks about how Robert Louis Stevenson's Poem The Shadow spoke to her, as well as The Swing!

I Wandered As Lonely as Cloud by Williams Woodworth reminds her of the son reflecting off her Son's hair.

Langston Hughes Poem Shame reminds her of how blessed she was and I Too reminds her of that as well.

And she goes on to tell ofHow Psalm 23 speaks to her of the spirit of her ancestors!

She talks of My Child Blossoms Sadly by Yehuda Amichai, the poet had immigrated to Palestine with His Orthodox Jewish Family while Germany was under Hitler's evil reign.

She talks about Have You Prayed, reminds her of praying for her loved one's.

Wallace Steven's The Snowman reminds her of winters in Cleveland Ohio.

Stopping by the Woods On a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost took her back to the memories of sitting in front of a black and white television set as a Girl of six, learning of JFK's assasination!

She talks about how Ars Poetica reminds her to push beyond boundaries.

1 January 1965, by Joseph Brodsky reminds her f feeling awkward around the adults and not understanding the passion about being Jewish. Childhood by Rainer Marie Milke reminds her of the importance of appreciating Childhood.

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden reminds her of when she is in fifth grade and her Mother announces that she is married, but husband and wife do not always get along, and often her Mother is left alone while her stepfather spends all night out.

Emily Dickinson's Poetry speaks often of the feeling of adolescent girls.

My Papa's Waltz reminds her of the Hope they found after her Mothers Fourth pregnancy, hope for a new beginning, but it also reminds her of the longer periods of time her stepfather is away!

Sylvia Plath Poppies In October reminds her of her Mother slipping into depression.

Sympathy Paul Laurence Dunbar reminds her of the 1970's The Vietnam War.

Bright Star by John Keats and A Blessing by James Wright reminds her of first love.

Taking The Hands by Robert Bly and Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond by E.E Cummings Speaks of Friendship!

Songs of the Last Act by Louise Bogan speaks of love and Marriage.

The author goes on to talk about her youngest sister taking her life at the age of 21, by then she is thirty one married, an editor and poet, pregnant with her first child and she's blindsided by this loss. Musse Des Beaux Arts by W. H Auden and One Art by Elizabeth Bishop speak to her in this time.

Tulips by Sylvia Plath and Walking in the Blue by Robert Lowell speak of Suicide and remind her of the pain of loosing her sister.

In this book we are reminded that poetry speaks to us in life, if we just take the time to reflect on it.

I give Poetry Will Save Your Life five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Readers who enjoy poetry (or who want to enjoy poetry) will like this book. I like how the author finds a poem to fit various moments in life. A good book for those who want to read more poetry, but aren't sure they can just sit down and enjoy a book of poems.

“The world is changing, but we seem to be living in our own little stagnant capsule, where everything depends upon the illusion of well-being. I feel a revolution happening inside of me too, but at the time I don’t know what it means. “

Jill Bialosky, author of books such as History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, The Life Room and House Under Snow here takes memoir using poetry to share episodes of her life. The beauty lives in moments that feed upon poetry. Or does poetry feed upon the moments? It’s a unique approach to sharing one’s memories, some tragic, others humiliating, but all about loving, questioning, trying to find meaning. Just why do we turn to poetry? How can a few lines encompass an entire state of being, of feeling? Poetry is often an island we find ourselves on after the shipwrecks in our lives, and there are many. It can be a friend whose shoulder you cry on, a curious companion hungry for revelation wondering at the marvels of being alive, as much as the voice of grief or first love.

I am much reminded of an English teacher that taped quotes and poetry lines all over his classroom. This induced a feeling of euphoria for me, particularly in that moment in time when I was ‘coming of age’ myself, and the world could seem both beautiful and terrifyingly brutal. Those words made me feel less alone, whether they had the bite of sarcasm or a spirited push towards courage. Bialosky takes poetry that was meaningful to her. With Musée Des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden, she finds a bridge that expresses the dreadful grip of tragedy, the weight of grief in her own life. Yet, poetry is a solitary endeavor, we peck at it and eat what gives us sustenance. Much like any art form, we experience poetry differently from the next person. Poetry can be the cry of the lonely, a plead for the guilty, a roar for the proud… it is fluid and each person has a different perspective than the next. This memoir is an outpouring of an emotional journey and yet it is fluid itself. If you love exploring poetry with a kaleidoscope of one’s life and how much poetry meant to them, this is perfect for you. I particularly think these are some of the best lines written about suicide. “I don’t understand it or know what to do with it. I’m angry. Not at my sister, but at all I don’t understand of the human psyche and the forces that unwillingly impinge upon a life. I don’t know what to do with this knot of fury.” What comes first, the poem or the experience? If you are remembering a poem after something pivotal has happened in your life, was the poem something like a premonition, portending the future? Or are we simply fishing for meaning in order to organize the mess all of our lives are, to find a semblance of order ? Why do certain images or words brand themselves in our mind returning only after such a moment has passed? Who has the authority to say? Poetry for Bialosky has been a companion, as it is for so many of us.

Lovely.

Publication Date: July 11, 2017

Atria Books

Poet, editor, and novelist Jill Bialosky writes a memoir structured around the poems that have helped her through life, imbuing it with deeper meaning and giving subtle guidance and reassurances as she navigates turmoil and joy. She's had some significant bumps in life, including her sister's suicide, which she wrote about in her previous memoir, History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life. Here she touches on that topic again, plus others including her childhood ups and downs, her mother's troubled relationships, the death of a childhood friend, and her struggles and celebrations with motherhood.

"I felt, in a strange way, that poetry saved me from the less interesting, emptier life I'd have lived had I not discovered it."

But it's not all dark, there are many light and happy moments, and there's poetry for those life events too. Each chapter is a short memoir piece about an event or incidence in her life, with an accompanying poem that she's come to associate with that instance. Interspersed throughout are some background details about the poets and their lives and work, sometimes tied into Bialosky's related life events. A few excellent quotes from the poets are also excerpted, discussing their work and its intended meaning or what they perceive poetry as being capable of doing.

All poetry is politics, she argues convincingly with the help of other poetic voices, and it's emotion and a lens to understand your world and the world at large to boot. "Robert Frost wrote that 'poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.'"

My favorite quote from a poet excerpted here: "When asked in an interview why she writes poems, Sharon Olds said, 'You know when you have something that you long to say to someone, and you could never say it to them, to their face? Then here's a place where you could speak.'"

The strongest chapter for me was the one centered around Adam Zagajewski's "Try to Praise the Mutilated World", which was published in The New Yorker thirteen days after the September 11th attacks. A poem inspired by the postwar ruins of Poland and Ukrainian villages, it was written nearly two years before the attacks and yet, as Bialosky notes, it's "eerily prescient and prophetic".

Bialosky recalls how people posted those New Yorker pages on bulletin boards and refrigerators, as a reminder of something that brought us together. It was such a shining example of what Bialosky spends the whole book explaining, along with sensitive examples from her own experience living and working in New York City that infamous day. Poetry is a phenomenon in how it helps us make sense of the world around us, and how it helps bond and bring us together in desperate times. It's a powerful piece of memoir.

"Perhaps this is finally the very heart of what poetry can do and be. It gives shape to those empty spaces within us that we have no words for until we find them in a poem."

The concept is fantastic. I love what she's trying to do here, sharing the signposts that certain poems have been throughout her life.

Unfortunately, sometimes the points made become repetitive, and other sections feel like dry classroom lectures on the structure of poems and what lofty meaning can be extracted from texts. Bialosky's own interpretations and applications were mostly thoughtful and interesting, but the standard repetitions of literary form and what something is intended to mean fell flat.

I think the intent was to help readers develop a sense of what's unique about poetry as literary art form, how its structure can have a musical quality, setting it apart from other literature. Or to show how each poem is an artwork with a special potential to imbue meaning into one's own life.

And it feels like it could be a book to help non-poetry lovers discover what deep personal meaning can exist in poems. But some of the attempts were too dry with too much literary lecturing, which is a shame. It's an excellent idea though, with some standout chapters. I'd love to see other authors work with this concept too.