Before writing this review, I was asked to carefully read the acknowledgements. I think, because this book is a frank discussion of a poetess disabled by neurodivergence, she’s in turn concerned by the narrative of disability in the pages. As she says, “I should write reviews… I’d worry about people thinking what happened to my brain could happen to their brain” (“Crazy’s Best When It Has Curtains”). Though representations of psychoses carry no intellectual infectivity, it’s the prevailing narrative of victimization by one’s own mental illness that Krause confronts in A Bouquet of Glass. That’s why the acknowledgements are gracious, mirthful. Krause fears the occasionally bleak pages adding up to a sense of helpless pessimism. In the final act of her book, she acknowledges optimism.

However, it’s not mere optimism that Krause desires. The objective of her collection is the reframing of disability into an imaginative superpower: “I have other talents… in the underbelly of the human mind… I collect… a bouquet of glass… gifts that can’t fit on disability forms. I add my favourite superpower to the list” (“Authorizing My Father to Assist with My Finances”).

An impressive collection of prose poetry from a first-time author. No amateur to her favoured style. The writing moves with that rare linguistic flexibility, both meaningful and rhythmic without getting lost in the music. It compels your eyes to read like they’re on a psychedelic superslide.

Until page 46, the book lives by its name. Poems as talismanic artifacts, abstracts of altered consciousness, individual flowers from the overall bouquet of glass. Here’s where the real narrative begins: “An illness, the unstoppable force that changed me, the story of needing to apply for disability” (“Anything You Want Out of Life”). The book becomes an open discussion with doctors, psychiatrists, with anthropomorphized antipsychotics, “Pill moving inside my brain… pill’s tentacles are everywhere” (“The Friendly Anti-Psychotic”). It becomes a debate with an idealized version of herself, a self more acceptable to ordinary society. A discussion between the poet’s divergent voice in bold lettering, and another voice in plain lettering, finally asking, “Wouldn’t you rather be me?” (“Hazards Of a Divergent Brain”).

Even the journal entry structure of the narrative, placed in a dyslexic twister of dates, proves this poet’s unique perspective on linear time. Instead, dates are organized by the logic of her ideas represented in chapter headings.

The author’s obsession with an ordinary world originates out of her inability to abide and live inside its confines. This book accepts that fact, looking for what’s on the other side. She’s not terrorized by uncontrollable visions, which cause her joy, “Creature was dancing in my room last night… write my vision in my daily crazy journal. And draw a star… The star means joy” (“The Star Next to Number 15”). These visions cripple her sense of normalcy, undermining her ability to take the material world seriously. The rigours of routine and responsibility no longer appear to matter in a world subject to spontaneous imaginative mutations. So, she moves on to this poetic world: “I smile because… this other world that never shuts me out… a belonging that cannot be broken” (“Losing the World”). And in this world, she finds meaning, acceptance, joy.