When I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma nearly seven years ago the aspect of telling people I dreaded most was…
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Lifesaving Poems: John Ashbery’s ‘Down by the Station Early in the Morning’
Down by the Station Early in the Morning It all wears out. I keep telling myself this, butI can never…
8 great books about dying
The chances are, more of us are mortal than have multiple orgasms -Violet Weingarten, Intimations of Mortality When I was diagnosed…
When poetry stopped me breathing in 2012
I have just been asked by Abegail Morley to send her a list of my poetry books of 2012 for…
Together we can beat war as a metaphor for cancer
If there is one difference I hope to make with Love for Now book it is to challenge the overwhelming…
Lifesaving Poems: Mark Strand’s ‘A Morning’
A MorningI have carried it with me each day: that morning I tookmy uncle’s boat from the brown water coveand…
Cancer, I found no poetry in you
I was formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, on Valentine’s Day, 2006. I was 42.…
When Your Friend is Diagnosed with Cancer
If you have a friend who is diagnosed with cancer, the best thing to do in terms of what to…
How I Wrote Love for Now
There wasn’t a plan. On January 1, 2006 I woke up with a sharp pain on my right side. I…
Why I wrote Love for Now
I began writing Love for Now, my journal-memoir of diagnosis and treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006, one week before I…
Remembering Jörn Cann
To all who knew him, it was a tragedy,one year ago, to lose the life-force that was Jörn Cann. I…
Lifesaving Poems: CK Williams’s ‘Kin’
Kin“You make me sick!” this, with rancor, vehemence, disgust—again, “You hear me? Sick!”with rancor, vehemence, disgust again, with rage and…
On Smiths Knoll
Yesterday was a good day and a sad say. A good day because Smiths Knoll, the poetry magazine edited by…
Lifesaving Poems: Raymond Carver’s ‘Prosser’
ProsserIn winter two kinds of fields on the hillsoutside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slipsrising overnight out of…
Lifesaving Poems: Don Coles’s ‘Photograph in a Stockholm Newspaper for March 13, 1910’
Photograph in a Stockholm Newspaper For March 13, 1910Here is a family so little famoustheir names were not recorded. They…
The First 50 Lifesaving Poems
I began writing the Lifesaving Poems posts in June 2011, back when I was using Posterous for this blog.…
Lifesaving Poems: Derek Mahon’s ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’
Everything is Going to be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplatethe clouds clearing beyond the dormer…
Lifesaving Poems: Naomi Jaffa’s ‘Some of the Usual’
Some of the UsualStanding in the kitchen before breakfast, not including some of the usual —what to buy in Budgens…
Lifesaving Poems 