Redefining Beauty is a unique poetry collection written during karla k. morton's diagnosis, treatment and survival of breast cancer. In a series of passionate and powerful poems, accompanied by photographer Walter Eagleton's black and white images, Redefining Beauty offers readers hope and comfort through its intimate candor, good-humored defiance and unfiltered honesty.
A lifelong poet, as well as a wife and mother of two, Morton was diagnosed with breast cancer in May, 2008. In search of information to help her fight the disease, Morton turned to books. She found facts and statistics. She found self-help books.
"But I needed more," she says. "I needed some grit, a leather strap between my teeth. And when I couldn't find what I needed, I simply wrote my way through it."
Morton wrote her way through diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation treatments and the PET scan that showed her to be cancer-free. She wrote her way through the loss of her hair, bone-crushing pain, insensitive sentiments, bald fashion statements and a fierce determination to live.
The Dallas Morning News says, "Karla K. Morton is perseverance personified," and arts editor for the Fort Worth Business Press, Michael Price, says Redefining Beauty "declares a manifesto for the rage to live."
"We have never seen a book like this for those going through cancer or those with loved ones in the fight," says Scott Wiggerman, lead publisher at Dos Gatos Press. "The poems are powerful, playful and genuine."
Redefining Beauty can be ordered online
directly from the publisher or at amazon.com
and
at bookstores across Texas.
