While The Myth of Being is a gentle recording of the author's earliest impressions and memories transcribed when she was a young adult, these verses, from the period of three or four years of age until her second marriage and especially difficult struggle with bipolar illness (1970s), an aside might be added; at a level beyond effective description and playful illustrations, which do reveal the activity of beautiful memory, one can find very early, deep pondering of the meaning of our existence-being-its beauty to hold briefly, but ultimately for the author, coming dark.

Elizabeth's poetry is, in sum, a collection of worded pictures of her sparing with illness, sensitivities, in relationships and of being - jousting with philosophical principles as they impinge on her sensibilities and intuitiveness, within the milieu of Bipolar perception. The resulting dissonance within bountiful periods of joy in creating - she finds, to some degree, a contentment, perhaps resignation, but surely a "lighted despair" in what she has come to view as the "feast" of life, where she wishes to come to table, often and long.

The small volume of verse, Scarlet Flow, is a selected record of one decade of the author's thoughts, which celebrates the value of beauty, perceived, whether in painful or more pleasant circumstances, of the past but also that in the moment, spontaneously; these two portions of our lives are seen to flow into each other, giving the wisdoms necessary for the sustenance of a healthy self. No perceptive experience is too small or grand, neither positive or too negative to be included into what becomes a cathartic record as much as a worded picture, illustrated, of the feast of life: the past is, because it was, and the moment is a celebratory journey in itself. Therefore, a memory of the childish pleasantry of playing marbles with brothers or catching back the residual beauty of a past relationship allows the flow of one's life to become a record and a release toward a good peace.

Elizabeth and Richard were fated to live a tragic love story. They met and immediately fell in love, despite emotional disorders that threatened their personal relationships. Elizabeth suffered from bipolar disorder; Richard, from a personality disorder. Yet, somehow, their own mental flaws came together to form a perfect unit that allowed them to love each other wholeheartedly until Richard's death in 1992. With the advent of new medicine, Elizabeth slowly got better, while Richard did not. This separation of effective treatment led to Richard's alienation of his wife, mainly through alcohol, until his demons took him away from his loving wife forever. It was heart-wrenching for Elizabeth, who over the course of twenty-two years had developed a symbiotic relationship with her husband-his inadequacies feeding hers, and vice versa. The only way to exorcise her own mental demons was to write, and write she did. Chanson de Harold is a semi-autobiographical collection of poems, written as an ode to her marriage. It follows an ill-fated knight as he is slowly swallowed by the evils of his own mind. It is an exercise in catharsis, as a wife struggles to survive the loss of true love-one verse at a time-and heal from her own psychological wounds in the process.