Description
Poetry. These poems show the work of a psychotherapist who is also a fine poet. A reader comes away with an understanding of human nature and of the extreme personal and professional challenges of working with others in so intense a capacity.
Lee Whitman-Raymond received her Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Brown University, where she was the recipient of First Prize from the Academy of American Poets for an unpublished manuscript. She has been published in Sojourner, Newport Review, 5 AM, Ailanthus, Sandscript, Syncopated City, Spectacle, Worcester Review, Northeast Journal, Bridges (edited by Adrienne Rich), and others. Her chapbook, The Light On Our Faces: A Therapy Dialogue, was published in 2000. She works in Providence as a psychotherapist and lives in southern Massachusetts with her husband, Rob Whitman-Raymond, also a psychotherapist. Together, they have raised two daughters and an incorrigible corgi.
Judy Guss Teicholz, author of Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns –
These are wonderful poems: imaginative, lyrical, insightful, filled with stunning imagery and each one delivering a subtle yet powerful emotional punch. Reading the poems as a therapist, patient (and member of the human race), I treasured the shock of recognition throughout and have already returned to each poem for further companionship and understanding. As a poetry lover, I was transported by the close yet unique observations of nature, brought to life on the page and in every instance linked to lived experience: to love, loss, longing, desire, despair, hurt, and hope. The poet seems to speak alternatively in her own voice as daughter, mother, patient, therapist, doctor, lover, beloved, and muse thus carrying us, as readers, through seamless transitions and holding us through necessary confusions. It is all the more paradoxical, then, that the sum of these confusions gently leads us to a clearing in which we feel that we have somehow transcended our individual sufferings. For any reader who has already cherished the first edition of this collection, the poems added for this second edition offer something of worth beyond the earlier publication. The new poems seem a bit edgier — presenting more sights and sounds of the city and perhaps an intensification of pain and loss yet all of this is made bearable, even uplifting, by the undeniable poetry of their telling.
Wendy Mnookin –
With the language of a poet and the skill of a therapist–and the heart of both–Lee Whitman-Raymond illuminates the bond between client and therapist. In poems that use conversation, memory, dream, and beautifully rendered depictions of the natural world, Whitman-Raymond reveals not only layers of grief and pain but also the yearning of both client and therapist for connection. Were the roses yours and mine? one poem asks. Yes. And the change and healing, too.