Customer Reviews

Hunger Speaks: A Memoir Told in Poetry. A Celebration of Recovery from an Eating Disorder

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This book tells a woman's story of self examination
and healing in elegant, revealing poetry. I loved the way
I felt as if I had been invited into an intelligent,
thoughtful, warm and honest conversation every time I
opened the book. It was a pleasure to read and I'll be
looking forward to more of her work.

I love this book of poems. Carolyn captures her journey of recovery beautifully. She is honest and generous with her experiences. It is a powerful reminder of the complexities of our lives, the pain we fit ourselves around so neatly but at great personal cost and the inspiration we can become to others by breaking out of the insanity of addictions/compulsive disorders, etc. I go back to this book again and again for uplift and inspiration.

Hunger Speaks is riveting as a story that builds with incredible intensity. I love the believable human drama where even the "villains" have multi-dimensional characteristics. They are multi-faceted just like all of us. The warmth and healing at the heart of the story make the hard times bearable. What a gift to the reader!

Carolyn Jennings' excellent memoir, HUNGER SPEAKS, brought back what William Empson wrote, "Language is a thin ice over a deep dark pond and the poet is a dancer over the ice, writing with her skates." No danger, no delight! This skillful skater gracefully cuts into our consciousness her deprivations--and joys.

Empson also said, "Poems are not packets of pills." But Ms. Jennings' glittering poems prove that,
as they enact fear, hollowness, hurt--thrills, sweetness, mastery--our cheeks and fingers freeze and thaw. We come alive on that pond. We are changed.