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Wednesday’s Child was published five years ago by Bear House Publishing when poet and New York City Voices’ poetry editor Cindy Sostchen was still an undergraduate at Brooklyn College.

I read Wednesday’s Child on my three-mile-long morning walk today. I read the entire collection of poetry twice because the vast majority of the poetry is quite good and well worth a second read.

Ms. Sostchen’s poem from wich the title of this book is derived, “Wednesday’s Child”, reminded me so much of poet Sylvia Plath’s style that I had to make sure it did not belong to Plath by doing a Google search on the Internet. It is difficult to believe that Ms. Sostchen was so young when she wrote it. The poem is shocking, saddening and full of perverse emotion. In short, it is powerful, visceral stuff. The full text of this poem may be read by going to www.newyorkcityvoices.org and searching the site for the title. If you read no other poem by Ms. Sostchen, read this one and be moved by powerful emotions.

There are many other poems in this collection which I enjoyed for various reasons: “Cellular Phones,” “Love in the Computer Age,” “Poetry Goddess,” “On my Not So Sullen Craft,” “Cupid Plays with Matches,” “The Affair that Turned into a Poem,” “I am Gray,” “Human Nature,” and certainly, “Ward Stories.”

“Ward Stories” gives a personal glimpse into her soul and her own struggle with mental illness. We learn through this poem that she has suffered the slings and arrows of mental illness and survived despite her sensitive poet’s soul. We feel for Ms. Sostchen for the long season spent in the “ridiculous gray of institution walls.”

In “I am Gray,” she posits that she is a gray being, though her poetry is a “technicolor thing.” She describes her poetry as “neither harlot red, nor muted gray.” If I were to characterize her color, it would be one of experience and emotional depth and even empathy.

A good poet must always balance between technical mastery of the poetic form and the raw emotion that imbues it with the breath of life. Ms. Sostchen’s poetry is a beautiful, shifting swirl of colorful and unsaturated images. If her poems were images to be photographed, the photographer would see differently every time he photographed any one of her poems. Wednesday’s Child is worth reading if you are into poetry or even if you are not.