{"id":266,"date":"2013-10-31T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T03:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fisherkingpress.com\/n\/?p=266"},"modified":"2022-12-11T17:25:47","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T23:25:47","slug":"dark-healing","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/fisherkingpress.com\/n\/product\/dark-healing","title":{"rendered":"Dark Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dark Healing<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Richard E. Messer<\/p>\n

These poems, written from lived experience, speak for the survivors of personal violence. The pain inflicted on so many families in our violent age has seldom been faced with such unflinching determination to depict it honestly and wrest from it an acceptance of suffering based on a full, active and meaningful view of life. Does anyone escape suffering? No, that is why those who survive and go on to a new acceptance of life, reach out to those who are for the present victims. Tragedy teaches what intuition always whispers: there is a realm in which we are all present to each other; we are One in the deep heart\u2019s core. We mourn those who die, and we move on through the knowledge that what has happened to them, no matter how brutal or tragic, does not define them\u2014or us. Our spirits and our souls tell us who we are and give our lives their meaning.<\/p>\n

Dark Healing says it all. Richard E. Messer\u2019s Selected Poems opens in the wake of his first wife\u2019s murder. We are plunged into the dark necessities of unbearable loss\u2014identifying the body, accounting for his own whereabouts, telling the news to his young children. These early poems are stark, plain spoken. They come from the hole in his heart. This haunting collection transports us through a long dark night of the soul into the dawn. Revived by dreams, by animal spirits, by the \u2018blue bear with the magenta nose\u2019 he returns us to life, to love, to the rich world of his spellbinding imagery. Messer\u2019s poems are magical, close to the unconscious, mysterious, shamanistic, they make astonishing leaps between realms. Dark Healing is a testimony to the transformative power of the creative imagination. Messer emerges, as do we, \u2018fierce with redemption, robed in song.\u2019 \u2014Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, author of The Faust Woman Poems<\/em><\/p>\n

Messer writes with a sureness that sounds not so much like intellectual conviction as the simple statement of bone and flesh. He has lived all these lives and can speak of them naturally as he breathes, and with the same pain and joy. \u2014Marianna Hoffer, Ohioanna Quarterly<\/em><\/p>\n

The concept of family is important to this author. \u2018There is so much violence, particularly against women and children. I wanted to promote a feeling of solidarity within families and for the victims of violence, who are often stigmatized. Murder definitely does not fit in with the Great American Dream.\u2019 \u2014Bonnie Blankinship, The Monitor<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard E. Messer earned his Ph.D. at the University of Denver. He has pursued post-graduate work in Analytical Psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute in K\u00fcsnacht, near Zurich. A poet, fiction writer, and literary critic, he is a Professor Emeritus of English at Bowling Green State University. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Nation, Psychological Perspectives, The Sun, and The Black Warrior Review. He is the author of two books of poetry, Murder in the Family, (1995) which was awarded the Nancy Dasher award by the College English Association, and A Life on Earth, (2006).<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nDark Healing
\nPaperback: 112 pages
\nPublisher: il piccolo editions
\n1st edition
\nOfficial Publication Date: Nov 11, 2013
\nLanguage: English
\nISBN 10:1771690070
\nISBN-13: 978-1771690072<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Also available as an eBook<\/strong><\/a>
\n