A Tilt

The poet’s many years as a practicing psychiatrist has given her the opportunity to look at, and experience, life with an acute intensity of joy and pain. Farideh de Bosset’s poetic and cultural roots go back to Iran, where she was born. “Poetry was a part of everyday life for me,” explains de Bosset, “while growing up in Iran, it was the language of our household. My parents often communicated by reciting poetry, one starting a line, the other continuing.”

Each poem in this debut collection records the events of a woman’s everyday life, as well as the poet’s experiences of talking to, and healing with, patients, and friends and family, as well as the impact of literature and art, the countries she’s lived in and visited, and, of course, her dreams and her understanding of those dreams on her work, her creation of art, and her life.

The title, A Tilt, refers to life being lived on a fine balance, or a tilt, and this experience is intensified as an immigrant. de Bosset says, “An immigrant is always between two languages, two cultures, like living on a “tilt” and being in danger of falling.”

Aware of the everyday juggling between different structures of the psyche and the external world in each and every one of us contributes to the poet’s awe and admiration for the enduring nature of the human spirit.