Mark S. Bauer

As a reader of poetry anthologies, I like to begin the book with an understanding of the editor's purpose in assembling the collection. In A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, and Addiction, editor Mark S. Bauer provides a map of psychiatric research on the book's subject and a guide on how to view the poems in light of those frameworks. In spite of this strong introduction, once I began reading the poems, I kept asking myself who this book is for. Perhaps it's the arrangement of the poems, which are presented in chronological order. I found myself getting bogged down in the older work, and it wasn't until I reached the more modern work that I was drawn back into the book. (I've read a fair bit of pre-1900 poetry, but my area of focus in my studies was poetry of the 20th century, so I'll admit my bias here. I think it's also fair to say that the subject matter weighs on the reader, be prepared for that, too.) Bauer gives us categories ("melancholy," "sweet melancholy," "madness and reason," etc.), and the older work might have been more compelling to a lay reader to give us the chronological order within those categories, but many of the poems don't lend themselves to clear categorization, I'll grant. There is a good balance of insider and outsider poems in the book, as well as popular song lyrics. Overall, I'd say this book succeeds in what the editor set out to create, and recommend this anthology to anyone interested in the connection of mental illness and poetry, though I would say don't feel compelled to read in the order the poems are presented.… (mehr)