Recently, Erica Lehrer has been writing the poems that comprise Dancing With Ataxia, which a month-long stay at Vermont Studio Center in summer 2010 greatly facilitated. Erica’s goal in writing and promoting her collection of poems is to increase awareness about ataxia and this family of diseases, but also to celebrate the bright moments of life, romance, childbirth, satiating one’s appetite, etc. As she notes in one of her poems “I am more than the sum of my symptoms.” A portion of the proceeds of each book sold will go to medical research via the National Ataxia Foundation and Princeton University’s new neuroscience department. Erica is currently participating in a double blind medical study aimed at slowing the progression of her disease. Let’s hope it works!
About Ataxia and Multiple Systems Atrophy
MSA is a rare, incurable degenerative brain disease with no known cause or cure. It combines many symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and ALS, with cerebellar ataxia and autonomic failure. It affects just a handful of every 100,000 people.
Often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s early on, some symptoms include problems with balance and coordination, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and blood pressure issues. They also may include sleep disorders and difficulty breathing. The average life expectancy after onset of symptoms is seven to nine years, but can be shorter.
To learn more, visit The National Ataxia Foundation, http://www.ataxia.org
Visions of struggle and triumph, told with a clear, powerful, evocative voice that can lead us into waking dreams. I highly recommend this book, and commend Erica Lehrer for her hard, glittering work.
-- Luis Alberto Urrea, Author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America
In Dancing With Ataxia, Erica Lehrer allows us into her brilliant mind and an existence that has become a mixture of loss, humor, doubt, hope and discovery, as she comes to grips with the effects of an inexplicable disease. The poems are like little messages found in bottles sent out to the world and fill the reader with insights and revelations that may only come from living on the island of her personal journey…. In one of her poems she records a moment before leaving Galveston Island before the great storm, “…Pressing my thumb against the damp wood, I left my mark, / proof that I’d been here, /. There is no doubt that this fine first collection of poems will be far more a proof for this emerging new voice.
-- Dave Parsons, 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate, Author of Color of Mourning
Despite the catastrophic effects of her disease, Erica Lehrer still displays “Perfect Pitch.” Like so many of the brave and beautiful we treasure, she has awaited her “season,” not with despair or even quiet resignation but with a burst of creative energy that fuels her poems and her life.
“One needs faith,” she reminds us, “to know up from down. Sky, water, ground: cyan, azure, indigo.” One needs faith to truly see, learn, and remember.
Her poems emit the fragrance of home-baked bread, of cinnamon, and the creamy abundance of mascarpone, while there is always, just beneath the surface dailiness, a depth of thought and feeling and an edge of darkness.
-- Francine Ringold, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Nimrod International Journal
Injury and loss often bring people towards poetry, but injury is by no means a guarantee of real poems, which can’t be bought, but only earned, by craft, labor, wit, and resources of language and imagination. In Dancing with Ataxia, Erica Lehrer demonstrates the kind of stubborn, witty, grown-up courage which goes into encountering the human condition as a kind of poetry. Of the many skills and charms in this collection, most moving of all is the steady open-heartedness behind her work. These poems are a rich and lively pleasure.
-- Tony Hoagland, Author of What Narcissism Means To Me
Critical Acclaim for Dancing With Ataxia!