Lives Brought to Life
“O’Driscoll allows us to see her in the struggle, which will encourage other women to start being honest about their lives too. This is a generous book.” – Shauna James Ahern
Kari is a writer and mother living in the Pacific Northwest. her work has appeared in print anthologies on mothering, reproductive rights, and cancer, as well as online in outlets such as Ms. Magazine, ParentMap, The ManifestStation, and Healthline. She is the founder of the SELF Project, an organization whose goals are to help teenagers, teachers, and caregivers of teens recognize the unique challenges and amazing attributes of adolescents and to use mindfulness and nonviolent communication to build better relationships. You can find her at www.kariodriscollwriter.com
A family built, a family lost. This is the story of the power of love and compassion. Growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Kari O’ Driscoll was taught that strength= stoicism and that a girl’s job was to take care of everyone else. For decades, she believed that and did what she could try and keep the remaining parts of her family together, systematically anticipating disaster and fixing catastrophes one by one. Until she broke. Despite trying to escape it, Kari found herself right back in the lap of loss as an adult and had to discover how to truly, profoundly care for those she loves without putting herself at risk.
“Cording’s poetry is fearless in his choice of subject. Rather than write quiet, domestic works, he expands each poem to effortlessly encompass themes of death, grief, God, and love.” – ForeWord Review
Without My Asking takes its cue from Psalms 90’s petition– “teach us to number our days.” That biblical sense of limits– of what we can and cannot know– and the mystery of before and after that encloses our existence is the center around which these poems turn. In poems that attend to the events of our lives– from the deaths of patients to hummingbirds at a bird feeder– these poems work to utter “Yes” to all that happens, that “peculiar affirmative” that recognizes, as Elizabeth Bishop says, “Life’s like that… also death.”
Robert Cording has published eight collections of poems, most recently, Walking with Ruskin and Only So Far. He taught for 38 years at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is a poetry mentor in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Orion, and many others.
CavanKerry is grateful for past and current support received from the following organizations: