Poetry Therapy: Interface of the Arts...

Even though only 202 pages, Nicholas Mazza's Poetry therapy: Interface of the arts and psychotherapy (Boca Raton, CRC Press, 1999) is a massive compilation on the history, theories, and practice of this rapidly growing field. It is not the type of compilation that just fills space on bookshelves, but the type that you'll find yourself turning to again and again as a practitioner as there are a lot of threads here worth thinking over. It's very convenient to have history, therapy, models, and ideas all in one place.

However, at the same time that there are a lot of ideas, this seems to be the product of editorial indecision: the inclusion of everything like this distracted me from finding and pursuing a single clear line. And a singular clear line is needed in this rapidly developing area of research and practice. As a psychologist and poet myself, I know that it is difficult to put what we do into words even though I think it is important to try again and again until we get it right. This is a call for the development and articulation of a coherent theory for a field that up until now has developed out of diverse fields.

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