Our collection of poems includes a variety of different authors, both male and female, who have experienced relationships difficulties throughout their lives. Just as any one of us naturally has to cope with the tension in relationships, so must we learn to improve our relative selves.
If it is poetry of witness you seek, seek no further; Nick Flynn's mother committed suicide when he was ten years old, and his father, after a stint in prison, was a homeless man. To help portray the emotions that follow such a demolished family life we used two of Flynn's poems from his outstanding book, Some Ether.
Our idea was to compile a group of poems that interests our readers, thus allowing them to possibly become more introspective about their own relationships. By doing this we can connect with our own relationship building blocks - our inner realization of the tension in our relationships - and further understand the complexities naturally associated with childhood, adulthood, and parenthood. The ease at which the audience can connect to these topics, and individual poems comes from the fact that most all of these situations have been experienced by everyone in their lives and some strained relationships are probably emblematic moments for many individuals therefore making it very easy to sympathysize with the emotion of the author(s).
It was our focus to analyze different kinds of relationships, such as sibling-sibling, mother-son, father-son, etc. Covering the entire spectrum of possible significant relationships allows the reader a more comprehensive understanding of the common feelings that occur when a relationship struggles. Regardless of what specific type of relationship is strained, if it involves a loved one and their breaking of your trust and/or letting you down, it will provoke a strong reaction. This explains how the audience can empathysize with the author(s) who speak of relationship issues that the reader has yet to experience.
This anthology of poems and the ideas encompassed in them have a universal applicability that was very attractive to us when deciding on a theme. The idea that everyone can and will be affected by the problems posed by these poems makes our theme of strained relationships very important, not just to us, but to the audience also. The way that problems in relationships are dealt with is key to an individual's continuing socialization. Better coping mechanisms will be developed if the situation is at least considered and thought about prior to it occurring and the best way to do that is through deep and personal introspective. These poems have the ability to evoke serious thought and introspection about these important issues and therefore could essentially, and if used inspirationally, help to change people's lives.
These concepts and poems that are used as vehicles for those ideas are directly related to the women at Connections for Life and their lives. Broken and tensioned relationships cause people to have to deal with the change and sometimes even make life decisions that will have a sincerely deep impact on the an individual's social growth. These women were faced with some choices and happened to make the wrong ones, and that is the only difference between us and them. These women are not bad people but just made wrong decisions. Our reasoning behind choosing this theme was that maybe it could draw our attention to how to make a better decision if faced with a similiar, negative situation.
