Shudder: Poems And Essays On Cancer, Care, And Healing

Abstract

This book chronicles my journey in understanding and coming to terms with my father's illness and death. In 2005 he was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), and in 2008 I traveled with him to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. In 2010 he died suddenly after his cancer transformed into an aggressive form of large cell lymphoma. The introductory personal essay ties together the trip to MD Anderson with writings from poetry and psychology, chronicling my experience with cancer care. The essay unveils an intimate relationship between art, the creation and experience of beauty, the provision of health care, and the meaning of healing. Like art, health care and healing are experienced in "the attempt," the process of trying to attain (health or beauty) without the ability to realize perfection. The poems weave together visions from the MD Anderson trip, other encounters with cancer, and pieces of my family's life after his death with a wide variety of images, memories, characters, and spirits. The poems begin with scenes and people from MD Anderson, then move to poems about coming into sense, discovery of the internal wild, and preparation for a time of sorrow. The later poems grapple with understanding the disease and my father's relationship with illness and conclude with in a continuation of "the attempt" even after death.