In “What Do You Love About Haiti?” readers get to know a little more about Rusch. He travels, including time in Haiti during an earthquake. The powerful images here suggest he witnessed the aftermath of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010, as Rusch states:

I’d never seen a dead body
before the earthquake. The earth
that day felt like something moving
underneath, in pursuit…
After the earthquake, I became accustomed
to the smell of death, no longer noticed it
clinging to my clothes, my skin. It became
the norm that houses should look like dioramas,
rooms exposed: staircases twisted and mangled,
kitchen tables tilting.

These words leave the reader uncomfortable yet compassionate. Indeed, uncomfortable yet compassionate is the theme throughout “Dualities.”

Issues with the narrator’s father are often present across “Dualities.” “Transitive Properties” exposes a father sexualizing his daughter, even when apologizing for sexualizing his daughter. Then in “Daddy Issues,” the narrator points out their own cliche of having an emotionally abusive father—for instance, a father who makes his young daughter grab her belly fat and tells her she was only beautiful when she was two years old—and how it had an effect on the narrator’s choice in significant others or lovers. It is shocking to hear horrific things parents can say to their children, but it isn’t too shocking to know it has a lasting effect on the child, even in adulthood. It is refreshing to see an adult analyze the past to see how they got to the present. This is the very definition of “coming of age.”

“Dualities” will keep you reading and while it may be tempting to live vicariously or play the voyeur by peaking into someone else’s sex life, these poems are more than titillation. Readers experience how these subjects grow from each experience. Rusch’s narrator gives up plenty of juicy, and sometimes painful, sex stories. In pieces like “Men Tell Me I’m Selfish” and “Querying,” a fearless voice discusses things from kissing to oral sex, and also the human growth that comes from sexual experience.

Pop culture injects a sense of fun into this work. “Erotic Jealousy” mentions those magazine or online quizzes we take to find out stuff we just had to know (or didn’t really need to know) about ourselves, and how sometimes those quizzes just don’t get us or give us appropriate answer choices.

“Facebook Knows” talks about what we all talk about. The advertisements we get really delve into our personal lives: what we search, what we talk about, and somehow what we think about.

I am not out, not even to myself, and yet a page for FtMs seeking to build muscle mass appears in my suggestions.

Safe to say, you can expect some entertainment or laughs in this emotional read. Still, growth and duality remain the focus of this collection. The narrator struggles with identity, sexuality and gender. This is a peek inside the dueling mind with dual personalities. On being born female with heterosexuality a foregone societal conclusion, and experience with bisexuality. Readers are made to to wonder masculine gender identity is a good fit. Then, unsure if it even matters. Does it matter?

“Dualities” won’t give us and easy answer but it also won’t disappoint. Read “Dualities” to interrogate what actually matters.

Megan Andreuzzi is an animal lover and a traveler from the New Jersey Shore. She earned a degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA in Liberal Studies with a dual concentration in writing and a minor in theatre.

The post Beyond “Dualities” in Poetry by Jason Phoebe Rusch appeared first on Newfound.

The one who sticks out the most is someone who I had my senior year of high school, and it wasn’t the thumbsucking habit-breaker. Everyone who went to my Catholic high school had him senior year. It was technically called Morality.

He is a gruff man with a rough exterior, a raspy voice and no room in his memory for student names, but he taught us real life lessons. In fact, in my early 20s, I would still get in touch with him to get some words of wisdom and advice.

One particular lesson he spoke of in this morality class strikes me just as hard today as it did the day he taught it in class.

“Feelings are important. We can’t always compare situations, but we relate to each other because of the feelings behind the situations,” he said. I even remember the exact words he used to drive home his point, 10 years later.

He said, “Whether a parent intentionally leaves their child to be with another family or a parent passes away, the child still suffers a loss of a parent. Whether the parent who is lost is dead or living, both children in this situation feels the sense of loss. That is what is important when understanding each other. We cannot say that one child suffered more or less because the particular loss. That isn’t what is important. The importance is that both children lost a parent and need to be consoled.”

I often refer back to this sentiment, and others he spoke of, while dealing with adult situations. I recently caught myself referring to this particular sentiment while reading books.

While reading, some of us might try to relate to, sympathize with or empathize with the main character or supporting characters. In the past six weeks I find myself really, over-the-top really, relating to the characters in every book that I’ve picked up.

I just finished “Cowboy Wants a Baby” by Jo Leigh and “The Summons” by John Grisham.

I found myself relating to the characters in each one of these novels, subconsciously channeling my high school morality teacher.

Grisham’s book is about what a son does with the will, estate, and found money after his father dies, which involves a brother who has a drug addiction. While I cannot personally relate to immediate family members having drug addictions, I found myself relating to the main character not based on situations, but on the feelings.

Sometimes I don’t jive with my family but am stuck in close quarters with them—sometimes laughing and sometimes dealing with pent up resentment. I, too, have no idea what I would do with my father’s estate and struggle to share it with my dopey brother. My imagination helps me understand another person’s plight when I imagine our situations are similar. I, too, have a father who is loved by a community like Grisham’s character of The Judge was. But I related to these characters based not only on situations, but on the feelings behind the situations.

“Cowboy Wants a Baby” was especially fun to relate to: Who wouldn’t want to fall in love with a handsome, successful cowboy?

Megan Andreuzzi is an animal lover and a traveler from the New Jersey Shore. She earned a degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA in Liberal Studies with a dual concentration in writing and a minor in theatre,

The post Teaching and Learning Empathy appeared first on Newfound.

In heavier times, the smallest gesture of courtesy or compassion can feel like a breath of fresh air. It may be what gets someone through the day, or the week, or the month. Or even the year.

Likewise, when we function optimally in a happy zone, it behooves us to observe with empathy the people around us. You can never be sure what unspoken sufferings and frustrations trouble the lives of our significant others, friends, family, coworkers, friendquaintances, or perfect strangers.

In our busy U.S. culture (especially in the Northeast, from whence I hail), we’d do better to offer one another more daily acts of simple kindness. Offer your subway seat to a pregnant woman. Help someone carry their grocery bags to their destination. Ask your depressed coworker, “How are you?” Smile at a stranger. Hold the elevator for someone. Hold the door for someone. Let a fellow driver into your lane; yes, even during rush hour. These very simple acts cultivate a culture of kindness that all can benefit from both as giver and receiver, no matter how happy or unhappy we are.

Additionally, practicing kindness opens us to the broader human experience, which better informs our creation of art. Science agrees this is good for our own selves, too. Artists, specifically writers, tend toward inwardness, and like all people, we have issues which can be somewhat alleviated by our own benevolence. Researchers at the University of British Columbia found socially anxious people felt their unquiet significantly alleviated, and an increase in  positive mood by regularly doing things for others. Altruism is for your self-preservation, conscious or not.

To get specific, psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California Riverside found that doing a kind deed once a week leads to a greater sense of overall happiness. Once a week!? And this deed can, over time, increase lifespan and life satisfaction. Sign me up. And remind me of this post mid-Winter, when I’m dragging myself around in a seasonal affective disorder slump.

Lauren Kronisch is a nutrition nerd by day, writer by night. With degrees in history and nutritional science, when she’s not counseling clients to eat a balanced diet, you’ll find her traveling the world’s mountaintops or chomping on dark chocolate while writing poetry, creative non-fiction, and nutrition articles.

The post Empathy: The Science-Backed Fortune Cookie appeared first on Newfound.