Her Addiction An Empty Place at the Table

<p>This is a poetry collection that will break your heart but also make you grateful you read it. Mary Sexson tells the story of her daughter's addiction(s) honestly sometimes painfully with grace and love. The first time I read the powerful and moving manuscript I sensed it could be a challenge for her to find a publisher. As the author of a book of poems about surviving abuse by a priest however I also had faith that some wise publisher would admire a poet who confronts difficult topics and stories like the one that Mary Sexson has the courage to tell about herself her family and their struggles. Sometimes she is patient sometimes frustrated impatient exhausted angry but always she is honest. Remarkably her love of and loyalty to her undependable daughter is everywhere evident. The most moving part of the story is her and her husband's having to raise their grandson a toddler while his mother in her thirties is in and out of treatment somewhere in an alley looking for a fix causing a traffic accident or temporarily back home before relapsing again. Sexson makes it clear that for everyone in the family there is a heavy toll to pay. At first the grandson is unaware of what's going on but eventually his grandmother observes him playing The Dinosaur Game with a family /of triceratops then realizes I buy him the dinosaurs / he configures / into the family he does not have. Later the little boy asks his grandmother a series of questions including: Why is [my] mommy not here? On his bedside table a Big Ironman stands whose job is to keep him safe / until her return. It's no surprise that the grandparents find it difficult to share this painful story with others which makes the telling of so much truth in these eloquent poems noteworthy. The price we all pay / for this level of intimacy is staggering Sexson admits. I ache for monotony...the comfort of it. In Map of My Fears she says: Your addiction draws lines / on my face deep and distinct. She becomes tired of writing about [her] in my head. Finally the grandparents start to whisper the story of their daughter's addiction telling others the facts / bare and ugly as they were. In the last poem The Words Sexson reveals all that she would like to be able to tell her daughter on her 37th birthday. The last message is this: Tell her / that you learn the truth about love / every time you are with her. The poet is too wise to tell us directly what that truth is-the poems in this outstanding collection deserving of a wide audience have already made us see and feel it. Mary Sexson's exquisite artistry makes forgetting her family story impossible.</p><p><strong>-Norbert Krapf</strong> Former Indiana Poet Laureate</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p>