About Asylum
Asylum follows the poet’s family from sharecropping on the Mississippi flood plain to Texas and California, as her mother, her sister, and the author herself struggle to overcome a pattern of generational abuse.
These poems evoke a family's veiled history, shaken into finely etched poems of restraint and elegance. Poetic devices, including short imaginative Obits of the poet's father, form connective tissue. The book is perfectly arced, the poems linked and speaking to each other. Here is depth: of emotion, family, and landscape. "My ghosts are slender reeds, / my family's bodies sinewy / from hoeing and picking / --cotton bits caught / on stubbled stalks." Here is beauty. Veronica Golos, Girl
Asylum is not only wonderfully written poetry, it is also a soul-stirring collection of poems recounting patriarchal violence and its direct connection to the frequency of institutionalization of women in the early 1900’s. To all who experienced such horrors at the hands of the people who were supposed to be trusted, it is a simple I see you. Sundress Publications Review
Readers comment
Caroline's poems are strong and important. They will change how you see the world. Bill Brown, The News Inside and 12 other books of poetry
Somehow the poet managed to suspend the shattering vase in midair. What must have felt like a crash in real time became a symphony when she slowed it down. J. Raines, novelist and songwriter
I learned a lot about abuse and its patterns. It's incredible to me personally, as several of my friends suffer from issues like memory loss, low self-esteem, anorexia, PTSD, and thoughts of suicide that accompany sexual abuse, and I see it now, thanks to this writer.
Marla G., high school counselor
These poems feel like the grounding Mississippi River, which runs through this collection of always beautiful, sometimes painful, poems. The poet travels the depths of family trauma to the rapids of mental illness, to the sweetness of pie. Moving, with a spark of humor, this book gives hope through the darkness. Rebecca Reviere, sociology professor
In this deftly crafted collection. . . one stands to learn much from Cottom's testimony that manages to marry the narrow path of poetry with a psychologically adept portrait of the survivor. Asylum serves the turn of truth and transcendence equally, and we are lucky to have it.
Lise Goett, Waiting for the Paraclete
HOW TO BUY
Asylum (Main Street Rag, 2022)
ISBN: 978-1-59948-918-6
is available from the author at caroline@carolinecottompoet.com
and
Asylum, a poetry collection and memoir by poet Caroline Cottom, explores themes of family, emotion, abuse, and recovery in beautiful, restrained language, providing evidence for the power of using our voices to heal from trauma. Published by Main Street Rag.