Pretty much like real life, but not a great story. What was that all about? It ends without much resolution for anybody, with the contrast between the psychiatrist and the bag lady.

But then two pages later she retires from practice. It's sad and obviously hard for the well sister, but the story pretty much ends here.It's annoyingly written: there's a big drama about whether one of the well sister's psychiatrist friends can or should treat the schizophrenic sister, and finally it's decided that she will. Each was competitive yet felt bad for trying to get distance.The schizophrenic sister is unable to get her health or life together, but becomes an award-winning poet.Later, the narrative bogs down when it seems clear that the sick sister isn't going to get better, despite different medications and treatments. We learn that her psychiatrist is able to assess her mental state during a given visit by just how much eye contact Spiro Wagner is willing to make, and that voices only she can hear lead her to harm herself and that she deeply fears harming.One sister went to Harvard and became a psychiatrist, the other, though also brilliant, was bedeviled by voices and has spent her life in and out of institutions.The part describing their growing up years was interesting as the twins tried to establish their own identities. Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia Wagner, Pamela Spiro, Spiro, Carolyn on. We learn, too, that Spiro Wagner believes she is evil, believes that her eye contact can and has caused others harm, that the world itself is menacing, riddled with threat and follow-through. Here is what we learn: the poems in this collection were written over a twenty-five year period by an intelligent woman who has, since the onset of mental illness in adolescence, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia as well as narcolepsy, and whose brain has suffered 'erosions' from Lyme disease spirochetes-these plus the many side-effects of treatment (electroconvulsive therapies, psychoactive drugs), the various and potholed byways of serious mental disturbance. O'Malley, the poet's psychiatrist, who also provides commentaries throughout on the poems themselves. This is a hybrid collection by design, document as well as art: there is a forward by the poet Baron Wormser, in addition to the enlightening Introduction by Dr. We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders, however, is constructed to compel its readers to make use of the background information that accompanies the poems, to enter the work informed.

The poem is the poem and the life is the life, the mandate asserts, and assumptions about the twain meeting are made only by beginners and the generally naive. Pamela Spiro Wagner's surprising collection of poems defies the common fiat that a reader must not assume the speaker of a poem is the author.

Divided Minds by Pamela Spiro Wagner