Download or read book Creative Uses of Children's Literature written by Mary Ann Paulin and published by Hamden, Conn. : Library Professional Publications. This book was released on 1982 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A grim prognosis, brain cancer, leaves the speaker in Kirkpatrick's Odessa fighting for her life. The tumor presses against her amygdalae, the "emotional core of the self," and central to the process of memory. In poems endowed with this emotional charge but void of sentimentality, Kirkpatrick sets out to recreate what was lost by fashioning a dreamlike reality. Odessa, "roof of the underworld," a refuge at once real and imagined, resembles simultaneously the Midwestern prairie and a mythical god-inhabited city. In image-packed lines bearing shades of Classical heroism, Kirkpatrick delivers a personal narrative of stunning dimension.