The Red Canoe

"...a work of tremendous metaphoric complexity and richness, in which a woman's pain - braided into a troubled marriage, branded upon an injured body - ultimately finds relief in the transformative power of language. Handler's dual guises as therapist/ poet merge as one in this healing book...an articulation of a keen intellect animated by heart and hope." - Raphael Campo, M.D. "Love here exceeds its bounds. Spilling over into body, food, sex, childhood, appetites, ideas and pain, the poems achieve a brilliant fusion of the particular and the universal. We are lustier, brawnier, better-fed beings for the prospects of Handler's gifts." - Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Joan Handler brings both honesty and balance to the intricate world that is a marriage.... Her focus is unremitting as she makes the reader feel how much pain and glory can go into two people trying to accept one another. This book is unmistakably poetry but has the feel of a novel - one wants to know what will happen to these people. - Baron Wormser"