Grown Up

Description

Review written by Jenny Cutler Lopez

Reading GROWN UP forced to mind Hemingway’s quote: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. And that is what Catherine Terranova has accomplished in GROWN UP. In these eighteen poems, she shares intimate, painful times of early life and places them on the page for the world to read. In a era when many writers share limited emotion with the reader, each of these poems reveal a startling openness.

People seek help through non-fiction books. People seek daily tasks and suggestions on how to find hope and inspiration after surviving lonely, scarring events. This book provides something different but nothing less useful. GROWN UP provides a reciprocal connection between reader and author, allowing the reader to exhale knowing there is someone who has articulated their pain. Terranova’s lyrical play on words and font changes to illustrate the change of voice is not only clever; it is a sign of great things to come from a truly talented writer.

“He made me to be special. To survive your very worse. So that I could use my scars. To help the broken and the cursed.” If you recite this quadrant from Terranova’s poem entitled Grown Up, you hear the rhythm, you sense her hope, you read the words of a survivor who uses her talent to provide solace for others suffering from PTSD and blind suffering of the loneliest kind – that of a child.