Learning to See in Three Dimensions Poetry [Paperback]

In her second collection of poetry,Learning to See in Three Dimensions, Pamela Spiro Wagner takes us deep into an exploration of the human condition by delving into the worlds of relationships, religion, nature, and mental health. In each poemand through each intense piece of original artwork included in the bookwe are led up to a line and dared to cross it into a new paradigm of understanding the world. In Mosaic we are challenged to understand assembling beauty from broken things; in State Property we are led to consider how with one aching brick at a time, / some walls are built, others are torn down&; in Friday Night Vigil we must reconcile How lovely the world is, although its dying. Just as powerful and original as Wagners insights is her description: like the poplar / still spilling her yellow dress / to the insistent fingertips of fall in When I Lose You and in Afterwards, What the Mother Said, in which Wagner writes of the mother of a jihadist martyr, But had I known of his plans / I would have taken a blade, sliced open my heart and crammed him deep inside. // I would have seamed it tight to seal him in. / I would have never let him go. In this rich, full collection, Wagners poetry pulls us into new territory through her alternating playfulness, hope, and, especially in the superb section Poems In Which I Speak Frankly, courage, a courage from which we all have much to learn.

Pamela Spiro Wagner is an award-winning writer, artist and poet. In 2001/2, she shared a First Place in the BBC World Service Meridian Writings International Poetry Competition, judged by Nobelist Wole Soyinke, for her poem “The Prayers of the Mathemetician.” With  her twin sister, a psychiatrist, Wagner co-authored the popular memoir,Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and their Journey through Schizophrenia(St Martin’s Press, 2005), which won the national NAMI Outstanding Literature Award and was a finalist for the Connelc‹