Mrs. Dumpty

Mrs. Dumpty is a riveting memoir-in-verse about "a great fall," the dissolution of a long and loving marriage. Chana Bloch's poems speak with candor and compassion, and without a trace of self-pity, about the familiar strains in a marriage of many years - aging, dependency, the erosion of feeling - as compounded by the ravages of a spouse's mental illness. She writes not only about horrors like electroshock therapy but about the after-shocks of history as well - in this case, the trauma of Hitler's Germany, which continues to take its toll. These poems, remarkable for their precision of language and the power of their imagery, are shot through with humor and wit even at their most tragic.