| Summary: | "The Myth of Water is a cycle of thirty-four poems by award-winning Alabama poet and writer Jeanie Thompson in the voice of world-renowned Alabamian Helen Keller. In their sweep, the poems trace Keller's metamorphosis from a native of a bucolic Alabama town to her emergence as a beloved, international figure who championed the rights of the deaf-blind worldwide. Thompson's artfully concatenated vignettes form a mosaic that maps the insightful mind behind the elegant and enigmatic persona Keller projected. Thompson takes readers on the journey of Keller's life, from some of the thirty-seven countries she visited, including the British Isles, Europe, and Japan to the wellsprings of her emotional awakening and insight. The poems are paired with fascinating biographical anecdotes from Keller's life and samplings from her writing, which infuse the work with richly-rewarding biographical detail. The poems in The Myth of Water reveal the discerning subtlety, resiliency, and complexity of the person Thompson perceives Helen Keller to have been. Through a combination of natural intuition, manual signs, Braille alphabets, and lip reading, Keller came to grasp the revolving tapestry of the seasons and the infinite colors of human relationships. Not a biography or a fictional retelling, The Myth of Water attempts to unlock what moved Keller to her life of service and self-examination. This is a deeply personal story of coming through--not overcoming--a double disability to a fully realized life in which a woman gives her heart to the world."--
"A collection of personal poems in the voice of Helen Keller. The poems included in this collection struggle with the humanity behind the name Helen Keller and serve to dramatically portray the person Thompson perceives Helen Keller to be. The poetry takes on many approaches, and as such these poems are based in documented fact filtered through distillations of reading and impressions. Some are fantasies of how Helen might have felt or thought, or how she responded as a woman in a particular circumstance. Thompson hopes, with these poems, to give a sense of Helen's simple humanity and great heart and that they will bring more people to appreciate Helen Keller, a woman who sought justice above all else"--
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