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The City by Leo Plouffe Jr. iUniverse
book review by J. Alpha
"To all the women and men who suffer through mental illness: They are the world's greatest poets though most of their works never escape the cavernous depths of their ailing minds."
Every patient has a different story, and every doctor has a different understanding of the power that poetry and the arts can bring to the healing process, and every reader will be moved in a different way by each of the poems in The City by Leo Plouffe Jr.—a doctor who writes and shares his poetry.
Possessing the ability to simultaneously confront and look beyond the obvious is something that thriving poets and dedicated doctors have in common. And in Plouffe's collection of well-crafted poems in The City, readers will be taken on a journey that simultaneously reveals the energy and exhilaration of the city of Montreal, Canada at the junction of the 1970s and 80s, while being drawn into the fateful encounter of two solitary strangers—a medical student and an enigmatic, mentally fragile poet—that randomly come together to confront the complexities and richness of their respective lives and the city.... the land of the mighty.
Through his dramatic sequences of rich narrative and unified poetic content—that is layered with coherence, inner vision, imagery, and symbolism—Plouffe synchronizes the rhythms of the lives of two men with the city they inhabit—alone and together.
From Plouffe's The Poet Alone . . .
Sitting under the dead tree
With a few green leaves
Still hanging on to the branches
The City will leave readers hanging on to the inner vision, captivating tone, and often haunting mood of Plouffe's narratives and poems, as they will no doubt return to read again and again.