Pretend Ballads by Edward McCrorie

NOTE:  This book is now onsale for $11 for the hardcover version.

From the Afterword to Pretend Ballads: The poems, prose and pictures in this book are a culmination of many discussions, readings, clinical help and sundry emotions over the past twelve years. But I did not realize there might be poetry here until December, 2012, when Beatrice and her associates published their major work noted in the Acknowledgements above. Most of these poems were inspired by Mothers, Infants and Young Children of September 11, 2001, A Primary Prevention Project, edited by Beatrice Beebe, Phyllis Cohen, K. Mark Sossin and Sara Markese. New York: Routledge, 2012. I found both frightful and hopeful memories of my own childhood returning. Over and over the children’s play, stories created in a lab room and intended to act as a kind of therapy, astonished me for their variety, anger, mourning, and especially their imagination. After six months I had about sixty poems on my hands, the rough draft of a book.