Description
This is a collection of poems on growing up in an alcoholic home.
Finalist for New England Poetry Club’s 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize
I have had experience with addiction among family and friends, and I find these poems very well written. They are at times symbolic and quite literal but with emotional and symbolic substrata. They are not easy reads because of the subject matter. Braley so powerfully describes and discusses not just the subject — alcoholism — but the consequences for those caught in its web, especially the innocent victims. Difficult but an extremely effective description of addiction, one that so deeply affects so many in our society, from alcoholism to opioid and other drug addictions.
– Robert Tobin (Poet, novelist, produced screenwriter, non-fiction book author, and former motion picture development executive)
About the Author
A raw, gritty New Englander, Dianne C. Braley found love for the written word early on, reading and creating stories while trying to escape hers, growing up in the turbulent world of alcoholism. After putting her pencil down for a time, she became a registered nurse finding strength and calm in caring for those who couldn’t care for themselves. Still, she never lost her drive to write, and later she found her passion again on the island of Martha’s Vineyard with the help of a famous author who became her friend and motivator.
Currently, Dianne and her family, both human, furry, and feathered, are firmly planted in a small town north of Boston but not far enough away to lose her city edge. Still, she escapes to the Vineyard every summer, picking up her pencil, resetting herself, and writing in the place that again inspired it. The Silence in the Sound is her debut novel.
Robert Tobin –
I have had experience with addiction among family and friends, and I find these poems very well written. They are at times symbolic and quite literal but with emotional and symbolic substrata. They are not easy reads because of the subject matter. Braley so powerfully describes and discusses not just the subject — alcoholism — but the consequences for those caught in its web, especially the innocent victims. Difficult but an extremely effective description of addiction, one that so deeply affects so many in our society, from alcoholism to opioid and other drug addictions.