Description

 

Brainstorming

by Carolyn Martin

After a debilitating stroke hit her in August 2025, Carolyn Martin was thrilled to discover she still had her voice and her ability to write poems. This chapbook is a collection of  ”stroke narratives” that document her physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences during her initial recovery. They are complemented by lyrical poems that revel in the inner and outer worlds she has explored for years. Since every poem is, in essence, a brainstorm, she hopes these poems will stir up a life-nurturing storm in readers.

 

Early Praise

There are many ways to go through a storm:  battening down, being swept away, dragging anchor. In her incredible new book Brainstorming, poet Carolyn Martin has chosen to travel with all sails beautifully unfurled—eyes, mind, and heart open. And with Martin at the helm, this ship is unsinkable. As the poems journey through her internal and external landscapes, they are infused with inspiriting life. Martin asks, “Is there a world somewhere that’s wide enough / for all the joy we were born to generate?”  She and her vital book open this necessary world for us. Even before we reach the last page, we are gratefully answering, “Yes! Oh, buoyantly Yes!”

––ANNIE LIGHTHART, author of Pax

Dazzling in its execution, Carolyn Martin’s eloquent Brainstorming brings to mind William Faulkner’s claim that we humans have the ability not only to endure extreme adversity, not only to survive, but to prevail. And prevail Martin does, in these poems and in her life, against the traumatic physical and mental dislocations wrought by a massive stroke that left her left side weakened and her spirit at sea. With masterful objectivity, unsinkable playfulness, and deep compassion, Martin recreates for us the details of a journey we cannot begin to imagine: progressing from physical pain, from the shock and grief of “never again,” to recalculating every single move she once took for granted, to ever‑increasing gratitude, acceptance, and, yes, joy. This book has enlarged and deepened me, and I cannot praise it enough.

––INGRID WENDT, recipient of the Oregon Book Award, author of Keeping It All Afloat

Brainstorming, the latest book by Carolyn Martin, bears witness to trauma through the lens of poetry. A stroke survivor whose poetry is raw, unpretentious, and unfiltered, Martin offers readers poems that are deeply personal and, at times, powerfully spiritual. The versification traverses surprise, sorrow, sheer grit, and self-determination that attests to the poet’s zest for life. Brainstorming is filled with the kind of poetry that speaks to the compassionate need for a healing heart. Carolyn Martin stands among the finest of Oregon poets. This collection bears witness to this attribution.

––EMMETT WHEATFALL, author of Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence

 

About the Author

From New Jersey English teacher to international management trainer; from author of business books to poetry collections; from work addict to devotee of the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards,” Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired—and resting—in Clackamas, Oregon.

Although a stroke in August 2025 weakened her body. Martin’s mind remains strong. She still embraces poetry as her way of interacting with the world—in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. That is why she continues to pursue the joyful challenge of translating experience into as few words as possible. In doing so, she embraces Anne Sexton’s dictate: “One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is: Whatever you do, don’t be boring.”

Martin’s poems have appeared in more than 200 publications around the world, and she has six full-length collections and three chapbooks under her creative belt. In addition, she was the winner of the 2025 Hudson-Fowler Prize for Poetry from the University of Central Arkansas.

Website: carolynmartinpoet.com