Manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, is estimated to affect several million Americans. Researchers and popular writers alike argue that symptoms of the condition occur with disproportionate frequency among poets, a view that has tended to reinforce the stereotype of the mad artist. But, as poet and volume editor Thom Schramm points out, the stereotype exists in part because the existing literature has for the most part neglected the intricacies of individual lives. Living in Storms aims to bring nuance and depth to the popular imagination. This collection represents the work of some eighty different poets whose work distinctively addresses the moods characteristic of manic-depression. The poems are arranged in eight sections, each representing a specific facet of the poetic portrayal of these shared experiences.

Manic / William Matthews -- Depression / William Matthews -- depression / Lyn Lifshin -- Mania: early phase / Joyce Carol Oates -- Bipolar / Steven Cramer -- Happiness / Jane Kenyon -- Sadness / Michael Blumenthal -- Mania / Susan Hahn -- Eclipse / Chana Bloch -- Circus framework / Brian Swann -- Depression / Lyn Lifshin -- "Holes I want to creep into" / David Ignatow -- Figure of distress in a field / Brigit Kelly -- Having it out with melancholy / Jane Kenyon -- Rock star dream / Daniel Halpern -- This / Peter Klappert -- Interiors / Marcia Southwick -- No country you remember / Robert Mezey -- The logic of opposites / Alane Rollings -- Returning from the shopping center to the suburbs / Peter Cooley -- Fighting despair: a haiku sequence / Liz Rosenberg -- The depression: triple haiku / Liz Rosenberg -- I'm sure / David Ignatow -- Born again in a moment of amnesia / Marcia Southwick -- Spinning / David Ignatow -- Parallax / Jeffrey Zable -- A dead heart / Diana Chang -- Disorder / Erica Dawson -- St. Dympna and St. Ottilia / Patricia Vermillion -- Shaking off the dark / Tino Villanueva -- A dreamer / Daniel Hoffman -- Exile / Robert Pinsky -- Glass / Suzanne Paola -- On lithium: after one year/after two / Rika Lesser -- The poet to his tongue / Peter Meinke -- Streaming / Diana Chang -- Astrophysics / Reg Saner -- Granary for Pop / Alan Naslund -- A lonely stretch of road / Dick Allen -- Lithium sonnet / Albert Goldbarth -- "And can ye sing baluloo when the bairn greets?" / Anthony Hecht -- The shape of happiness / Susan Hahn -- Question / Reginald Gibbons -- Snow / Donna Trussell -- What she had believed all her life / Alberto Alvaro Ríos -- Mountaineering / Diana Chang -- from Tubes / Donald Hall -- Portrait sketch / Angela Ball -- The madwoman by Picasso / Marjorie Power -- Depression / Edward Brash -- Against telephones / Vern Rutsala -- from A brief history of antidepressants / David Hernandez -- My friend who sings before breakfast / Enid Shomer -- The ash / William Heyen -- Somnia / Gwen Head -- Figures of the human / David Ignatow -- Analytical episodes / Reginald Gibbons -- God's face / Richard Krawiec -- To play by heart / Pamela Uschuk -- Thorns / Cheryl Savageau -- Arrow / Nina Nyhart -- Bipolar affective disorder as possible adaptive advantage / Belle Waring -- Thanksgiving / Steven Cramer -- Learning to feed ourselves / Carole Ann Borges -- Mountain view with figures / Paul Mariani -- The poet's house preserved as a museum / Leonard Nathan -- In the grove: the poet at ten / Jane Kenyon -- Now, as we drop: a poem of guilt / Tino Villanueva -- "The animal night sweats of the spirits burn" / Gregory Luce -- Meditation of Virginia Woolf's final diary entry, written three weeks before her suicide / Robert J. Levy -- Irises / Peter Cooley -- Man on fire / C. B. Follett -- The enclosed field / Peter Cooley -- Christopher Smart / Edward Hirsch -- from Epigraphs / Gerald Barrax -- Bedlam / David Baker -- Trumerei / Linda Bierds -- Retreat / Anthony Hecht -- Explanation / Jean Lenski -- This dream / Philip Booth -- The mole / Daniel Halpern -- The mood museum: anxiety / Marcia Southwick -- In the crepuscular / Peter Cooley -- New days / Liz Rosenberg -- Days and nights / Harvey Shapiro -- The mood museum: sloth & torpor / Marcia Southwick -- Bewildering miracle / Michael Pettit -- Don't know / Lawson Fusao Inada -- The mood museum: depression / Marcia Southwick -- Again / Tino Villanueva -- Helpless, we go into this ground, helpless / Leo Connellan -- Depression / Hayden Carruth -- There / Cynthia Huntington -- Something is there / Carol Lem -- Paperweight: the state I'm in / Sandra Agricola -- Stasis / Jane Flanders -- Depression in winter / Jane Kenyon -- Grief / Susan Ludvigson -- Fat Tuesday / Michael Pettit -- Bipolar / Brian Swann -- Grief in early spring / William Hathaway -- Spring lettuce / Elspeth Cameron Ritchie -- The end of winter / David Budbill -- Mania / Miriam Dyak -- Hurricane watch / Linda Pastan -- Vegetable garden after too much rain / Sheila Cowing -- Depression beginning in 1956 / Ira Sadoff -- Dominion: depression / C. K. Williams.