7-10-03
PHANTOM BREAST UNLOCKS
FEELINGS BEFORE AND AFTER MASTECTOMY
Diana Hume George's new book of narrative poetry, Phantom Breast, offers a sequence of images that will resonate with anyone, man or woman, who has loved someone suffering from breast cancer. Published by the Edinboro Bookarts Collective, this small but beautiful book addresses feelings that surround life both before and after mastectomy.
Phantom Breast is not about George's own experiences, but about a friend who traveled through the lump-biopsy-mastectomy-recovery maze. Yet it is told in George's voice, in a way that brings the reader into her response to this devastating disease.
George, a professor of English and women's studies at Penn State Erie and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, is finding her way into a productive retirement filled with writing and teaching. This summer she will serve as poet-in-residence at Chautauqua Institution Writers' Center, directing a weeklong workshop and presenting a lecture titled "Words for Wartimes." She is the author of three collections of poetry, The Resurrection of the Body, Koyaanisqatsi, and A Genesis, as well as a chapbook, The Evolution of Love. She has written and edited books of essays and literary criticism including Oedipus Anne: The Poetry of Anne Sexton and The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching America.
The Edinboro Bookarts Collective was founded in 1988 by a group of writers, artists, and teachers living in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. The group's focus is on the production of one-of-a-kind and small edition books. Phantom Breast was designed and produced by Collective members Mary Jane Kidd, Billie Perkins, and Suzanne Winterberger.
Phantom Breast is available from the Edinboro Arts Collective at P.O. Box 77, Edinboro, Pennsylvania, 16412, or at the Erie Book Store.
Contact: Loretta Brandon 814-898-6063 (O) e-mail: lzb6@psu.edu