A Brilliant Loss

Eloise Klein Healys A Brilliant Loss is a poetic journey into the loss of language and the reclaiming of it. Healy had Wernickes aphasia in 2013 when she was the first poet laureate of the City of Los Angeles, and the virus hit her the night of her reading with Caroline Kennedy at the Central Library. Also called fluent aphasia, Wernickes aphasia affects language and the use of words. Healys collection shows that her brain has access to its deepest unconscious, and that place is poetry. Her deepest language is poetry. Its as if a dancer was denied the ability to walk or run, and could only dance. Healy writes of losing her words and finding big love.