Susan Budd

Triptych Susan Budd

"Triptych" is a journey through the liminal realm between dreaming and waking, madness and reality, myth and memory. Like a three-paneled painting, the central poem is flanked by two smaller poems. "Nightmares and Bugbears" is a labyrinth of dreamscapes, a nightmare world of fragmented consciousness through which Phoebe must navigate. "Epistles to Hope" chronicles her descent into madness, into an abyss of anxiety, panic, and chaos, and her struggle toward clarity and light. "Mythopoesis" is an essay-poem that explores the psychology of myth-making. Together the three poems reveal how the mind transforms memory into myth and myth into art.