Telling Abuse

About the Book

In Telling Abuse: New Poems, the poet confronts diverse types of personal abuse suffered by males and females during their lifetimes. Threaded throughout these poems, deep yearnings for reliable relationships run counter to inconceivable betrayals of trust. Scenarios reveal physical, sexual, verbal, and emotional violence, exposing attempts by victims to cope with neglect, rape, and incest. Both famous and unknown survivors risk sharing their experiences, so others can be spared the same fate. The hopeful result of breaking the silence, by daring to tell, emerges as the courageous theme in Telling Abuse: New Poems.

About the Author

Dr. Ann M. DeVenezia published her first book Grave Rubbings: New and Selected Poems, dedicated to her ancestors, on her seventieth birthday. A former high school English teacher, she graduated from the College of Saint Elizabeth. Her Master of Letters in Humanities and Doctor of Letters in Russian Studies are from Drew University. The recipient of a Dodge Grant for her study of the interrelationship of the arts, she has traveled extensively in Europe, Russia, and China. DeVenezia’s poetry appears in Asphodel, Caduceus, Connecticut River Review, Gradiva, Italian Americana, Lips, Off the Coast, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Pyramid Poetry Plus, Rattle, Red River Review, Stray Dog, and Tar River Poetry, among others. She and her husband Richard reside in northern New Jersey.