Overview

These poems explore a couple's love for each other in the face of the challenging diagnosis of an incurable disease. The speaker attempts to ""practice"" grief and prepare herself for a future alone. Readers will find support as they deal with the challenges of aging, caretaking, and grieving.

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9781971191010

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Reviews

""With lyricism that expresses a range of emotions, Terry S. Johnson charts the painful journey through her beloved's illness, death, and beyond. These poems do not shy away from the harsh realities of navigating a dizzying array of treatments, procedures, and routines that 'no one has prepared us for.' Underneath the pain is the acknowledgment that 'we must create a new lexicon, shape our denouement.' As readers, we experience Johnson's loss and acceptance as she chooses a new landscape where 'increasing spring light sprouts green.'"" -Gail Thomas, author of Leaving Paradise, Odd Mercy, and Waving Back ""'I'm ready for spring as my beloved prepares / for dying, and so I am preparing, too.' Each poem in Terry S. Johnson's heart-rending book is a beautifully sculpted vessel holding the weight of the speaker's shifting grief witnessing her partner's illness through the crushing reality of his death to a new territory of resilience, where 'the refrain' of her love's absence 'blossoms in a new pitch.' The title elegantly captures that ineffable sense of great loss becoming a greater presence, love's north star. 'I have become the night. / The stars, your eyes.'"" -Patty Crane, author of Bell I Wake To and translator of The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer

Author Information

Terry S. Johnson recently settled in Anchorage, Alaska, after a lifetime in New England. She performed as a professional harpsichordist before serving as a public school teacher for many years. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Driftwood, Cancer Poetry Project Anthology, Chest Journal, Edge, Journal of the American Medical Association, Passager, Slipstream, Technoculture, and Theodate. Her collection, Coalescence, won a 2014 Honorable Mention in the New England Book Festival, and her second book, Plunge, launched in 2019. www.terrysjohnsonpoet.com

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