Oxford Street - David C. Bellusci - Bog

Greek mythology, schools of psychology, and a child growing up on Oxford Street create the structure for this collection of poems where childhood emotions are explored. The poetic intersection of myth, reality, and analysis offer the hermeneutic framework to unravel "powerlessness" and "fear" of a child. The collection opens to a six-year-old boy's world on "Oxford Street" where the reader enters the boy's home, discovers the rooms, and unlocks the symbols. The mythical figure of Apollo that runs parallel to Oxford Street connects to--and disconnects from--the Greek pantheon of gods in the restructured family relation of gods. Apollo experiences freedom in the open fields of Thessaly but restraint triggered by thoughts of Hestia and Zeus. Interpreting Oxford Street in terms of the relation between the powerlessness and fear of a child, Freud, Jung, Maslow, Adler, Erikson, Sullivan are included in the poetry as avenues of revisiting childhood.