Crazy Broken Thing is a shockingly raw and vulnerable compilation of poems dealing with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, self harm, dissociation and PTSD. While these poems offer an unfiltered look at the struggles of dealing with mental illness, the progressions of the poems -- all written twenty-five to thirty years ago, before the author became a happy and successful author and mother of five -- also show that there is a path out of the darkness.

They also show that we can be crazy, broken and still beautiful.

Alicia Bayer had published over a hundred poems and performed poetry readings in person and on local television before putting her poems away to "get her sh*t together," get a proper job, become a respected author and raise five children. Over twenty-five years later, she rescued her boxes of words compiled them into a series of books in the Poems from the Attic series.

The Minnesota State Arts Board helped fund Crazy Broken Thing and the next book in the Poems from the Attic series, Slut Shamed (Inappropriate Feminist Poems).