An Individual History describes the fears, anger, and guilt--personal, familial, societal, political, and historical--that comprise a life. The figure of the speaker's maternal grandmother who was institutionalized for five decades serves as an overriding metaphor for this haunting, bold new work by an essential American poet. from An Individual History" This was before the time of lithium and Zoloft before mood stabilizers and anxiolytic and almost all the psychotropic drugs, but not befor thorazine which the suicide O'Laughlin called "handcuffs for th mind. It was...