[Tim Murphy]

From another Newburyport stalwart:

Cancer Prayer

Dear Lord,
.....Please flood her nerves with sedatives
and keep her strong enough to crack a smile
so disbelieving friends and relatives
can temporarily sustain denial.

Please smite that intern in oncology
who craves approval from department heads.

Please ease her urge to vomit; let there be
kind but flirtatious men in nearby beds.

Given her hair, consider amnesty
for sins of vanity; make mirrors vanish.

Surround her with forgiving family
and nurses not too numb to cry. Please banish
trite consolations; take her in one swift
and gentle motion as your final gift.


--Mike Juster

[Deborah Warren]

I've heard Mike read this poem many times. Seeing it for the first time on the page, where I can take it in on my own, I admire it even more. I read his comments here a while back on how it was based on a composite of situations rather than any one real one; maybe that's what lets it speak so movingly for all of us who watch people die of cancer.

It's an absolutely wonderful poem.

[Jim Hayes]

I find myself in complete agreement with Deborah, this is an absolutely wonderful poem, and it's such a simply expressed, compassionate piece.

A work showing the touch of a true master and one that I can certainly learn much from.
Thanks again Tim and Michael

Jim

[Dick Davis]

I agree with the comments posted above by Deborah and Jim. This is a really terrific poem: it does what I guess most of us want poetry to do – it describes something accurately, by doing so it evokes appropriate emotion, and its aesthetic qualities provide a measure of perspective and consolation for an event that pushes away perspective and seems to mark itself as outside the possibility of consolation. I’m really surprised and pleased at the quality of the sonnets that have been posted, but even given the high standard I think this one of the best in the bake-off. A couple of quibbles/queries. Why is it lineated as it is? I see no real point to that, and would have found either an 8 line stanza followed by a 6 line stanza, or three quatrains followed by a couplet, both fine and obvious ways to lineate it. The very opening slightly bothers me – one could say it’s not the Lord so much as the doctors who are going to flood her nerves with sedatives. The "but" in line 8 bothered me slightly too, as if kindness and flirtatiousness were somehow normally to be considered as opposed qualities? I’d have thought flirtatiousness in this sort of situation is a kind of kindness. The volta comes very late indeed (the middle of line 13) but that seems appropriate to what is being described so that’s less a quibble than an observation.

[Richard Wakefield]

One small but wonderful touch is the way we're made to sound three accents in "temporarily": the word is thus drawn out, counter to its sense but congruent with the speaker's hopes. Beautiful.
RPW

[Roger Slater]

I agree with all the comments so far.

I'd add that there's another appealing aspect to this poem that's perhaps easy to overlook. That is, for all the darkness and sadness of its subject matter, there's genuine humor in the poem as well, though the humor works in service of a serious and emotional design and not to disturb the somber and sad sense of resignation that the poem leaves us with. The poem reflects the sort of gallows humor that sometimes can be found in the darkest situations. It's almost as if the speaker were being sarcastic to God and not approaching God as a true supplicant who actually believes that God exists. A true supplicant and believer in God, I think, would have asked God to make the woman well, not to "smite the intern" ("smite," I would also argue, is a humorous word in a poem with otherwise modern diction) and to provide "flirtatious men in nearby beds." And "Given her hair, consider amnesty/ for sins of vanity" is also, I believe, a line that has a decidedly humorous bent without turning the poem into a humorous poem. There's also humor in the idea that God, and not the doctors, should "flood her nerves with sedatives."

The "humor," if that's the word for it, creates perhaps the poem's most appealing dimension. That is, the poem seems to portray a speaker with an agnostic view of God, one who never trusted God, and one who perhaps has tended to mock theology, but who is turning to prayer nonetheless because some loved-one is dying. It's a poem which nominally embraces God but which also disavows "trite consolations," and a poem in which the speaker can only bring himself to ask for small favors (a sedative, not a cure) from a God who is generally thought to be omnipotent. So ultimately, I experience this poem as a reflection on ambivalence about the idea of God and how that ambivalence runs up against our experience of mortality.

It's a wonderful sonnet, that much is clear, although my attempt to examine why it's so wonderful may have led me to ramble a bit (sorry about that).

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

This is a poem I've known and loved for a long time, for both literary and personal reasons: maybe that's the way poems work when they're completely successful. And I think Roger has hit on exactly the tone in the poem that moves me most: the irony, the ambivalence, about prayer that is nevertheless engaged in because everything else is also hopeless. It is humor, of course, but of the dark kind, and without anger or bitterness. Wonderful poem.

[Michael Juster]

What a wonderful thing to come back home from a grueling trip and read so many kind words from so many people I respect! I'm very grateful.

[David Anthony]

Lovely poem.
I think the late turn is very effective here. Till then we don't know the prognosis, and it pierces like an arrow.
When on song nobody can beat Michael.
Regards,
David

[Alan Sullivan]

This is so moving, and so well-done. I doubt that I could refrain from awarding it the laurel, were the choice mine.

A.S.