Learning to Do Without (Paperback or Softback)

This collection of poetry, by poet and artist Stephan Anstey, is dedicated to people who suffer with depression, for whatever reason and to whatever degree. It is written as a gender-neutral study, exploring the myriad ways we break and hurt as we suffer loneliness, separation and loss. At times the narrator may seem more masculine or feminine, but it is generally intended to be neither.

The poems wend their way through the course of a week, with approximately 7 poems for each day of the week, and culminates in a long surreal-narrative that deconstructs the types of things we learn do without.

The primary goal of the multi-part final poem is to braid together many of the most fundamental elements of these things with a constructed personality and regurgitates all of them with the barest snippets of a story. One is expected to consider the name Ethyl as it relates both to an old lady, plastic or alcohol - any of the three or all of the three in any portion or combination.

Ideally, there is a tongue-in-cheek dark humor to the entirety of this book that culminates in the sick comedy inherent in these tragedies as they unfold.