The Bearable Slant of Light

The Bearable Slant of Lightasks what the burden and gift of madness brings to a family, to our world.

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The Bearable Slant of Light asks what the burden and gift of madness brings to a family, to our world.


What can we bear and what can we lift when a beloved, when our world, is light-struck and mad? The Bearable Slant of Light documents a web of clinical assessments, medications, the terrible beauties of delusion, and the fragile gifts of darkness. Poems that reach across the history of writers and artists who fought and sometimes lost their own battles against mental illness are set against the urgencies of our anxious world and the intimate struggle of one family.