Book of Poetry by Oklahoma Native Touches on Current Societal Issues

March 2, 2011 - PRLog -- In the past two weeks a battle has been waged in the state of Wisconsin over the bargaining power of unions. To help remedy the looming $3.6 billion budget deficit, the Wisconsin Assembly has passed a bill stripping most public workers of their collective bargaining rights. Public workers include many whom society depends on to teach and nurture their children, such as librarians and teachers. Some teachers believe that if the bill passes, there will be numerous negative effects such as, unmanageably large class sizes, which is shown to be detrimental to a student’s learning process, and the possibility of the teacher’s being laid off.

When weighing the options and outcomes of something that will affect not only adults but inadvertently, children, one would hope that the decision-makers are taking this situation seriously. Cynthia Gustavson’s book of poetry, Please Use This for Children and Not for War and Guns, not only examines the family and society’s politics, but also government politics that affect the lives of our young citizens.

Please Use This for Children and Not for War and Guns is a masterful collection of Midwestern poetry by Cynthia Gustavson. From the title activist poem, "Please Use These Words For Children," about her simple letter to the government along with her family's taxes saying, "Please use this for children, and not for war and guns..." to a poem about a conversation between a mid-western mother and her daughter about long-kept secrets over an empty ice-cream bucket filled with lily-of-the-valley slips, to "The Poem that Needs to be Written" about the red-haired child growing up to be gay, Gustavson confronts issues seldom tackled in mainstream poetry but, nevertheless, do need to be thought about in today’s society.
   
Please Use This for Children and Not for Guns and War, written by Cynthia Gustavson, is available in hardcover (ISBN 978-1-933918-50-1) by Blooming Twig Books and can be found on www.amazon.com. For more information please visit the book’s web site, www.cynthiagustavson.com.

About the author:

Cynthia Blomquist Gustavson is the award-winning author of five poetry collections, several workbooks for therapists, and has been published in numerous journals. She has a family therapy practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma where she resides with her husband of 40 years, a pediatrician who all too frequently takes care of neglected children. Cynthia was educated at Gustavus Adolphus College, Boston University, Louisiana State University, United Seminary of the Twin Cities, and Oklahoma State University. Cynthia has taught at Northeastern State University in Tallequah, Oklahoma and Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Louisiana.

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Blooming Twig, based in New York City, is the publisher of award-winning books that matter, from self-help to children’s fiction. We publish between 15 and 20 new titles each year, and are distributed in the United States and internationally.