Against the background of Socrates' insight that the unexamined life is not worth living, Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old investigates the often overlooked inside dimensions of aging. Despite popular portrayals of mid- and later life as entailing inevitable decline, this book looks at aging as, potentially, a process of poiesis: a creative endeavor of fashioning meaning from the ever-accumulating texts - memories and reflections-that constitute our inner worlds. At its center is the conviction that although we are constantly reading our lives to some degree anyway, doing so in a mindful matter is critical to our development in the second half of life. Drawing on research in numerous disciplines affected by the so-called narrative turn - including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the psychology of aging - authors Randall and McKim articulate a vision of aging that promises to accommodate such time-honored concepts as wisdom and spirituality: one that understands aging as a matter not merely of getting old but of consciously growing old.

Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old

Health, Fitness & Dieting

McKim, Elizabeth

Randall, William L.

Psychology & Counseling

Oxford University Press

Elizabeth McKim explores poetry as narrative with her poems about Bombay and Benares, India.  Coming out of two trips to India, the poems re-create the unique feel of these cities.  You will know the people and the sounds and smells of their lives after reading these poems.  Eleven photographs by Karen Moss, a noted Boston-based artist, and Cary Wolinsky, a contract photographer for National Geographic, illuminate the poems.

Body India

Yellow Moon Pr

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Boat of the Dream

Arts & Photography

Music

Talking Stone Pr of Troubadour

Book by McKim, Elizabeth, Steinbergh, Judith

Beyond Words: Writing Poems With Children

Steinbergh, Judith

Elizabeth McKim (described in Poetry Flash as "powerfully womanly . . . yet devilish, daring") is a pioneer performance poet. In her bawdy and intimate fifth collection, she looks back—and forward—as she ages, in poems connected by The Red Thread, a bright motif in which all is interwoven and always beats to the rhythm of the human heart.The poems in The Red Thread wind their way insistently through time and love and the hushed confusion of family secrets; between beloved sisters, daughter and granddaughter, through music, weddings, the blessing of carnal knowledge and across borders and checkpoints: India and the Middle East, where love letters float in the wind in which the innocent body is assaulted and a lover dies in a woman’s arms. Knitting together the heart, mind and body of one of our keenest and most tender observers, The Red Thread is a work of uncommon power.Elizabeth McKim is a poet whose roots are in the oral tradition of song, story and chant. She performs and teaches in collaboration with artists, musicians and expressive therapists in the U.S. and internationally. Known for four previous books of poetry: Burning Through, Body India, Family Salt and Boat of the Dream, she has published in some of the nation’s most prestigious magazines, including Ploughshares, River Styx, Poetry, Painted Bride, Drumvoices and Epoch. She has been a visiting poet in hundreds of schools and colleges, and has been the Artist-in-Residence for six years at the European Graduate School for Expressive Arts Therapy in Switzerland. She is the co-author of Beyond Words: Writing Poems with Children, a pioneering text which has been in print for more than two decades. She is a member of the National Faculty of Lesley University in the Department of Creative Arts in Learning and lives in greater Boston, Massachusetts.

The Red Thread

Leapfrog Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McKim, Elizabeth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McKim, Elizabeth