This Thing Called Poetry
Kathleen Henderson Staudt
(Editor)
Description
This collection presents the voices of adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer - part of a cohort of some 70,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 39 who are diagnosed with cancer each year. Navigating cancer includes addressing human needs that become suddenly more pronounced for this age group: the loss of independence and a sense of immortality, the need for deepening relationships in a time of uncertain future, the anger, frustration and even humor involved in adjusting to a new body and a new story, and especially an intensified awareness of what is beautiful and valued in human life. This collection brings together established poets and new poetic voices to explore the wide range of emotional, imaginative and spiritual experience that the AYA cancer journey involves. It is offered as a resource for patients, families and survivors in the hope that it will deepen the sense of understanding and even community among AYA survivors, their loved ones and medical providers.
Product Details
| Publisher | Finishing Line Press |
| Publish Date | August 26, 2019 |
| Pages | 72 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781635349900 |
| Dimensions | 9.0 X 6.0 X 0.2 inches | 0.3 pounds |
Reviews
"Late summer, and the roses / in second bloom, know what's coming." Beauty and death mingle in this fine poem by Anya Krugovoy Silver, as they do in so many of the poems in this moving, accomplished anthology. Pain and anger often coexist with humor here, though not with self -pity. If language can be redemptive for reader and/or writer, it certainly Is in these pages.
--Linda Pastan, Poet Laureate of Maryland 1991-95
The poetry in this collection fiercely bends along and speaks to the jagged shape of the suffering body. These poems give a bold and nuanced language to the trauma of illness and the fragile promise of wellness.
--Thomas Dooley, Poet in Residence, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital
In poems that are powerfully evocative of the physical and emotional complexities of living with cancer, this stunning gathering of poems embraces the wide-range of responses: From fear and anger to curiosity, grief and gratitude for life. They invite us to step into the gray light of the cancer ward with its unknown worlds of hope and despair as we move down "a corridor...to a door " where something uninvited has "written our name," and into a room that will leave us with "a tracery of scars." This room, paradoxically, helps us realize that we all live with life's radical ambiguity and that at any moment we too might discover we have reached that unwanted marker of "before and after."
--Michael Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland 2004-9
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