In Common Encounters Hanna Zacks invites the reader to share with her personal experiences and thoughts on a variety of issues. Hanna's major goal is to reach out to people, tell them that in their joys and in their sorrows they are not alone. This she does by writing honestly and revealingly about her own struggles and describing her observations on daily life situations, while listening to music, roaming around in an antique show, or driving to work. In poems about relationships she writes perceptively about complex interactions in the family, about friendship, forgiveness, even the inevitable encounter with a bully. She also has a few poems on lessons she learned in the course of her work as a psychotherapist. Hanna's long time interest in philosophy is manifested in thought-provoking poems on memory, the mysterious workings of the brain, the significance of modern technology, and the nature of truth and beauty. One of Hanna's ongoing interests has been the field of extrasensory perception, and some of her poems address the puzzling phenomena of ESP. Common Encounters is divided into three parts: Shared Moments, Connections, and Ponderings. Within each part the poems are arranged loosely by subject matter rather than chronologically. All poems were written between the years 2003 and 2007.