Floriography Child
A Memoir in Poems
by Lisa C. Krueger
Written in memoir form through the language of flowers, this book of poems examines a daughter’s chronic illness in order to consider the vastness of human connection.
Floriography Child is a book about salvation: what gives people strength in the face of adversity, not just to endure, but to move through and beyond our myriad human sufferings. Through poems, micro-essays, and visual art, Floriography Child addresses fundamental questions about purpose, connection, and resilience. Written in memoir form, this book examines the mother-daughter relationship and its intimacies in the context of a daughter’s developing chronic illness. How to bear another’s suffering—how to find sustenance in a world fraught with uncertainty and pain—is addressed through the language of flowers and the natural world. Ultimately, this book asks us to consider how each of us, whatever our path, is connected.
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“In stark movements of mind, the touching and keen language here radiates a mother’s verdant love for a daughter beset with chronic illness. That love is aching and palpable, full of strength and resolve. And thus, the poems in Floriography Child echo in layers and in Krueger’s profound music, a spirit of wisdom I find rich, intoxicating, and integral.”
— Major Jackson, author of The Absurd Man
“Poems in this collection appear as psalms or elegies for an ill daughter, often rendered through a mother’s obsession with flowers. The poems are like small impressionist paintings by a poet with a controlled hand and eye and strong voice.”
— Dorianne Laux, author of Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems
“Lisa Krueger is a flame-keeper, a poet who gardens and writes about nature to stave off fear. These broken, therapeutic, lacerating poems of a mother and daughter use the language of flowers to help us endure and enhance life.”
— Edward Hirsch, author of The Heart of American Poetry
Lisa C. Krueger
Lisa C. Krueger, Ph.D., MFA, is a clinical psychologist. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner, and with Red Hen Press. She has published articles on the creative process and parallels between poetry and therapy as well as interactive journals for girls and women. Recent poems have been included as finalists for the Catamaran Poetry Prize, the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, and the Pushcart Prize. She maintains a therapy practice with subspecialties in health psychology, women’s issues, and writing therapy. She lives in Pasadena. Floriography Child is her fifth book of poetry.
