The Art of Touch

A Collection of Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond

Title Details

Pages: 190

Illustrations: 4 b&w images

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 11/01/2023

ISBN: 9-780-8203-6533-6

List Price: $22.95

eBook

Pub Date: 11/01/2023

ISBN: 9-780-8203-6534-3

List Price: $22.95

eBook

Pub Date: 11/01/2023

ISBN: 9-780-8203-6535-0

List Price: $22.95

The Art of Touch

A Collection of Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond

A collection of essays and poems that explore the importance of touch

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  • Description
  • Reviews
  • Contributors

In The Art of Touch: Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond, the unique voices of thirty-nine of some of the most creative thinkers of our times have been brought together to consider the profound impact of one of our five main senses: touch.

Psychologists, healers, massage therapists, academics, creative writers, and others reflect on or tell personal stories about what it means to be able to touch or experience touch, or to have to go without it—as so many did and still do because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They explore how transmissions such as texting may impede opportunities for touch, while those like Zoom may make it possible for people who otherwise might be left behind to stay “in touch.” From the experience of touching beloved animals to the life-changing ways in which books and performances can touch us, virtually all aspects of touch are acknowledged in these pages.

In a time of pandemic, touch is a risk and a luxury. Touch informs life not only as an intimacy but also as a teacher. Thanks to the editors of this vivid anthology for gathering writers’ accounts that remind us of connections in crisis, help us laugh and grieve, and allow us finally to be touched.

—Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I've Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986–2020

The Art of Touch is a remarkable collection of essays and poems on the motivations, transformations, catastrophes, and beauty that lie in human touch. The authors, who are poets, novelists, psychotherapists, and scientists, provide a full range of contemplations on their personal experience of touch, ranging from the terror of physical touch to the most recent advances in the study of touch by a neuroscientist. The pandemic has forced upon us the issue of the dangers of being touched by anyone and of touching something anyone else might have touched. We all know the dehumanizing effects of this situation just as we know the joy and beauty of touch with those we love. The reader will find that he or she is deeply touched by this book.

—Thomas H. Ogden, psychoanalyst, author of This Will Do

Magdalena Ball

Bonnie Boucher

Anne Casey

Joy Castro

Quintin Collins

Paula Coomer

Laura Crucianelli

María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado

Linda DeFruscio-Robinson

Faye Rapoport DesPres

Erika Dreifus

Raphael Frumkin

Nicole Hardy

Will Jennings

Meg Kearney

Becky Kennedy

Sarah Kotchian

Rocco Lo Bosco

Sarah McElwain

Damian McNicholl

Lynda Miller

Lynn C. Miller

Sarah Moon

Kate Niles

Anne-Marie Oomen

Alicia Ostriker

Christine Page

Judith Simon Prager

Robert Root

Paul Singer

Phyllis M Skoy

Donna Baier Stein

Grace Anne Stevens

Alison Stone

Daniel B. Summerhill

Deborah Swift

Beatriz Terrazas

Meg Tuite

Susan J. Tweit

About the Author/Editor

Joan Schweighardt (Editor)
JOAN SCHWEIGHARDT is the author of The Rivers Trilogy (Before We Died, Gifts for the Dead, and River Aria), The Last Wife of Attila the Hun, Under the Blue Moon, and other fiction and nonfiction titles. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Faye Rapoport DesPres (Editor)
FAYE RAPOPORT DESPRES is the author of five books, including the memoir-in-essays Message From a Blue Jay, the three children's books in the Stray Cat Stories children's book series, and the flash fiction/micro-fiction collection Soul to Soul: Tiny Stories of Hope and Resilience. She is a graduate of the Solstice MFA program in creative writing, and her personal essays, fiction, and poetry have been published in a variety of literary journals. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.