IPPY AWARD -
Bronze medal winner 2008 Independent Publishers Book Awards
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For more
than a decade, Karen Chase taught poetry writing
to severely incapacitated patients at a large
psychiatric hospital outside of New York City.
During that time, she began working with Ben, a
handsome, formerly popular and athletic young man
who had given up speaking and had withdrawn from
social interaction. Meeting on the locked ward
every week for two years, Chase and Ben passed a
pad of paper back and forth, taking turns writing
one line of poetry each, ultimately producing 180
poems that responded to, diverged from, and built
on each other's words. Land of Stone is
Chase's account of writing with Ben, an
experience that was deeply transformative for
both poet and patient.In Chase's engrossing narrative, readers will find inspiration in the power of writing to change and heal, as well as a compelling firsthand look at the relationship between poet and patient. As she tells of Ben's struggle to come out of silence, Chase also recounts the issues in her own life that she confronts by writing with Ben, including her mother's recent death and a childhood struggle with polio. Also, since poetry writing seems to reach Ben in a way that his clinical therapy cannot, Chase describes and analyzes Ben's writing in detail to investigate the changes that appeared to be taking place in him as their work progressed. A separate section presents twenty-two poems that Chase wrote with Ben, selected to show his linguistic development over time, and a final section offers Chase's thoughtful reflections on the creative process. --------------------------------------------------------------- Download the Reader's Guide ~ Download the Press Kit--------------------------------------------------------------- "Karen
Chase's Land of Stone is a
poignantly eloquent narrative of the therapeutic
relationship between an admirably humane, gifted
poet and a schizophrenic young man. They write
poems in collaboration, once a week for two
years: each providing a line, the other
responding. No miracle takes place, nor need
ensue, but both are changed somewhat for the
better. Chase is restrained and persuasive in
telling her story."  A Best Book of 2007 - Chronogram "The
teacher is a poet, who understands the depths of
helplessness from battles with childhood
polio.Her student is a young man, sealed in a
cocoon of silence by a series of traumas. In a
psychiatric ward, they wrote poetry together,
poet and patient, alternating with each other,
one line at a time. This simple story is told
with such honesty and force, chances are you will
not put the book down until the last poem. Land
of Stone is also a story of the many
intimate roles that language plays in our lives,
in the sounds and images it evokes." "Karen
Chase has invented a means of communication that
is capable of stirring interest and communicative
response even in a psychiatric patient who, for
his own reasons, is determined not to be
interested or responsive. The effectiveness of
the quiet, elegant way, respectful of privacy, in
which she invites interest and response makes the
diagnostic interrogations and urgings to
expression common in clinical work seem
heavy-handed and primitive by comparison. In
character, she does not presume to teach a lesson
to clinicians, but there is one to be learned
here nevertheless." "Land
of Stone is a gripping, unusual book. I will
hand-sell it until the cows come home!"
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