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Poems to be read by the refrigerator light...After battling food, weight, and self-esteem issues for years, Trish Dougherty, a poet, mother, and graduate student at the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, VT, decided to employ her strengths of self-perception, humor, and the written word to wrestle her demons to the ground.
Forty Poems for Forty Pounds is for anyone who has struggled with self-worth through their relationship with food. While touching upon the shame of diets, the pressure of media shaped expectations, and self-love,
Forty Poems for Forty Pounds also weaves the constant of weight as self-reflection into all aspects of life from looking at the stars to the shaping of “tall and slender” pottery.
Forty Poems for Forty Pounds is an engaging collection of poignantly vulnerable, humorous, and insightful poems that will remind anyone who endures the similar daily whispers in their head that they are not alone and that self-love and acceptance is a choice for the “now” and not a reward to be earned “some day”.
List of contents
1. Lifetime
2. You Are Not Alone
3. Divine Intervention
4. Too Many Confessions Are Not Good Either
5. What’s Being Said
6. Plateaued
7. I Cheated
8. Reasons
9. I'm Out
10. The Monster Within
11. This You Must Do
12. Decisions
13. Pretending
14. What’s in a Size?
15. Cheat Day
16. Beyond Number
17. Daily Fiber
18. The Deadline
19. Pulling
20. Love
21. Different
22. Just One Haiku
23. A Funeral as Seen from the Acquaintance Section
24. Bon Appétit
25. Secrets
26. Snobs
27. An Assist
28. Cherry Chip
29. Hurting
30. Maybe
31. Andy Capp Fries
32. Remind Me
33. Troy, if Helen Was a Pizza
34. Bones
35. Praise
36. Spring
37. Engineers
38. Mistakes
39. Skin
40. There is No Fortieth Poem
About the author
Trish Dougherty is a poet, mother, and maven of the Beautiful Fairy Print Press. She currently works in Education Studies at Middlebury College and is pursuing her post-graduate degree at the Bread Loaf School of English. Currently residing in Orwell, VT with her husband, Jim, Trish has a knack for humor, beer, & filling her recently-emptied nest with projects when she’s not writing.
Summary
Poems to be read by the refrigerator light...
After battling food, weight, and self-esteem issues for years, Trish Dougherty, a poet, mother, and graduate student at the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, VT, decided to employ her strengths of self-perception, humor, and the written word to wrestle her demons to the ground. Forty Poems for Forty Pounds is for anyone who has struggled with self-worth through their relationship with food. While touching upon the shame of diets, the pressure of media shaped expectations, and self-love, Forty Poems for Forty Pounds also weaves the constant of weight as self-reflection into all aspects of life from looking at the stars to the shaping of “tall and slender” pottery. Forty Poems for Forty Pounds is an engaging collection of poignantly vulnerable, humorous, and insightful poems that will remind anyone who endures the similar daily whispers in their head that they are not alone and that self-love and acceptance is a choice for the “now” and not a reward to be earned “some day”.
