The Myth of Water
Poems from the Life of Helen Keller

Jeanie Thompson (Author)

9780817358570

Paperback / softback, published 15 July 2016

80 pages
21.8 x 13.7 x 1.2 cm, 0.17 kg

While it is hard to find a contemporary poet able to conjure any human figure, much less one so sealed in stone as Helen Keller, in Thompson’s Myth of Water Helen lives. She is present. Had I not read these simple poems I would not have believed they could have been written."" — Louie Skipper, author of To Speak This Tongue and As Sunrise Becomes The World: A Trilogy

The Myth of Water is a cycle of thirty-four poems by award-winning Alabama poet and writer Jeanie Thompson in the voice of world-renowned Alabamian Helen Keller. In their sweep, the poems trace Keller’s metamorphosis from a native of a bucolic Alabama town to her emergence as a beloved, international figure who championed the rights of the deaf-blind worldwide.

Thompson’s artfully concatenated vignettes form a mosaic that maps the insightful mind behind the elegant and enigmatic persona Keller projected. Thompson takes readers on the journey of Keller’s life, from some of the thirty-seven countries she visited, including the British Isles, Europe, and Japan to the wellsprings of her emotional awakening and insight. The poems are paired with fascinating biographical anecdotes from Keller’s life and samplings from her writing, which infuse the work with richly-rewarding biographical detail.

The poems in The Myth of Water reveal the discerning subtlety, resiliency, and complexity of the person Thompson perceives Helen Keller to have been. Through a combination of natural intuition, manual signs, Braille alphabets, and lip reading, Keller came to grasp the revolving tapestry of the seasons and the infinite colors of human relationships.

Not a biography or a fictional retelling, The Myth of Water attempts to unlock what moved Keller to her life of service and self-examination. This is a deeply personal story of coming through—not overcoming—a double disability to a fully realized life in which a woman gives her heart to the world.