Elizabeth Clayton’s “The Myth of Being” receives critical acclaim from the US Review of Books
“Emotionally stirring” and “engaging to the imagination” are some of the praises received by Elizabeth Clayton’s The Myth of Being, a poetry collection that chronicles the author’s earliest impressions and memories transcribed when she was a young adult.
The poems in this collection are written over a period of three or four years of age until her second marriage and difficult struggle with bipolar illness in the 1970s.
USRB’s Michael Radon comments that “the fusion of art and poetry creates an emotionally stirring read that engages both the eyes and the imagination.” The book critique praises Clayton for treating somber topics “with hindsight, acknowledging the pain and the struggle while appreciating simpler times or the better side of times past.”
Radon also observes how the author draws “imagery from spiritualism, the natural world, and family life, the words paint a picture just as vivid as the included paintings.” Finally, he praises Clayton for being “honest and unafraid,” with her poems serving “as a beacon out of challenging times, proving the way out and conveying it in a flourishing, sincere way.”
