The Myth of Water is a cycle of thirty-four poems by award-winning Alabama poet and writer Jeanie Thompson in the voice of world-renowned Alabamian Helen Keller. In their sweep, the poems trace Keller’s metamorphosis from a native of a bucolic Alabama town to her emergence as a beloved, international figure who championed the rights of the deaf-blind worldwide. Thompson’s artfully concatenated vignettes form a mosaic that maps the insightful mind behind the elegant and enigmatic persona Keller projected. Thompson takes readers on the journey of Keller’s life, from some of the thirty-seven countries she visited, including the British Isles, Europe, and Japan to the wellsprings of her emotional awakening and insight. The poems are paired with fascinating biographical anecdotes from Keller’s life and samplings from her writing, which infuse the work with richly-rewarding biographical detail. The poems in The Myth of Water reveal the discerning subtlety, resiliency, and complexity of the person Thompson perceives Helen Keller to have been. Through a combination of natural intuition, manual signs, Braille alphabets, and lip reading, Keller came to grasp the revolving tapestry of the seasons and the infinite colors of human relationships. Not a biography or a fictional retelling, The Myth of Water attempts to unlock what moved Keller to her life of service and self-examination. This is a deeply personal story of coming through—not overcoming—a double disability to a fully realized life in which a woman gives her heart to the world.

The Myth of Water: Poems from the Life of Helen Keller

Literature & Fiction

Thompson, Jeanie

Poetry

University Alabama Press

Jeanie Thompson's elegiac poetry tracks the geography of the heart and the power that resides in relationships. She speaks, with no pretense, as an American signifier and witness to the sacred yet often disturbing aspects of our world.In White For Harvest, Thompson chooses fifty poems that chart the joy and pain of children, family, loves lost and found, and the continuing resonance of her native Southern landscape. New work explores theological themes through persona poems and personal narratives. Her first collection, How To Enter the River, and her most recent volume, Witness, are represented in this selection.An award-winning poet, Thompson has published poems in literary journals from California to New England. Many readers will identify with how she turns the coin of memory to uncover her past, and how she shows us, in poems of passion and faith, that what the body knows is immense.

White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems

River City Pub

The Widening Circle: Extension and Continuing Education at the University of Alabama, 1904-1992

Education & Teaching

Higher & Continuing Education

Univ of Alabama Pr

Witness

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Books by Thompson, Jeanie