[Julie Steiner]

A friend just wrote:

I have been asked to recommend a book of poems which relate to someone dealing with chemotherapy. I cannot think of one that I would recommend as being in any way therapeutic, any ideas?

As I have two other friends in chemo at the moment, I'd be interested in hearing about something appropriate (i.e., not too depressing), too. Not that cathartic expressions of anger, discouragement, etc., would cross a book off the list...but I'd like the overall tone of anything I gave to be uplifting. Thoughts?

Surely there's an anthology or two out there....

[Gail White]

Take a look at the website cancerpoetryproject.com -- they have an anthology that looked like it might be what you want.

[Michael Juster]

I'm not sure I would send "cancer poems" to a cancer patient. I think if it were me in the cancer ward, I'd rather read Wendy Cope, Sam Gwynn, Joe Kennedy, Gail White or Julie Kane.

Laughter is therapeutic.

[marly youmans]

I like Michael Juster's suggestion, but why not also an anthology with short poems and great variety like . . . Mary Meriam's "Irresistible Sonnets." A great deal happens in a sonnet, and yet it suggests good order and good closure--all promising elements for a very sick patient, who may not have the endurance for longer poems.

[Julie Steiner]

All very helpful suggestions. Thanks so much.

[dean peterson]

Julie, while I thought too (given your qualification re: depressing) the best poems a person diagnosed with cancer might read would be those not directly about cancer, I'm going to recommend Rafael Campo, anyway. Here's a link for you, a couple recent poems,

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=16102

[Wintaka]

Julie:

It isn't a book, nor does it focus on cancer alone, but OPW Fredricks's "Touch: The Journal of Healing" is a webzine that might be worth checking out.

-o-

[Roger Slater]

There's one funny(-ish) poem that's fairly well known, by a fellow named Haldane, that begins:

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,...

Here's the whole thing.

[Cyn Neely]

I have no suggestions but wanted to point out from personal experience when I was going through chemo I really only wanted to read "escape" novels. Get lost in a story that was not my own and had nothing to do with what I was going through. Everyone is different though and if the patient has requested poetry that is great. If a well-meaning friend is thinking poetry, well... not so sure.... I am sure whomever is the recipient will be grateful that someone cares enough and is thinking of her/him - and that is truly worth tons to a cancer patient, they just might not read it.

[Rick Mullin]

Well, some of the closures in "Irresistible Sonnets" ain't too neat and pretty. Those are the good ones~,:^)

My initial reaction is very similar to Michael Juster's!

RM