Happenings, Heartbeats, and Mental Breakdowns: Poems

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sometimes I think summer has its own
pattern after all, some weirdly repeated

series of actions, happenings, heartbeats,

and mental breakdowns.

These are the first lines of Road Work, the poem that opens this collection and sets the tone for the rest of the book. The poems are personal, emotional, and sometimes confessional, but Manthe always strives to engage readers’ minds as well as their hearts. Many of the poems reflect the author’s lifelong struggle with depression, and others who have experienced the isolation that often comes with mental illness might find a little comfort and a sense of familiarity in these pages.

There are lighter moments, too: follow the nervous driver of Nighttime on 95, enjoy a snack of Apples and Hot Chocolate, and watch the speaker become first enamored, then annoyed, with a guy named Phil in A Slice of Otto B. From adolescence, and the joys and pains of young love, to marriage, motherhood, and the deaths of her parents, Manthe’s poems explore what it feels like to be constantly buffeted by the forces and stresses of everyday life, when she’d rather be lost in a book.

In addition to approximately 50 poems, the book contains a short essay entitled Losing Everything but Our Appetites, which Manthe wrote in memory of her father.