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Fierce, frank, witty poetry about cancer diagnosis, treatment, remission, and end-of-life
Written in the last three years of her life, Andrea Werblin Reid‘s To See Yourself As You Vanish is a collection of unsparingly brave and insightful poems about her experience with ovarian cancer. Frank, fierce, and witty, her work does not hide behind cliches, platitudes, or tropes, but addresses the hopes, frustrations, fears, and longings that would be easy to leave unspoken.
She offers friendship and understanding to those who share her experiences and powerful insights for caregivers and those who work in oncology, hospice, research, and psychology. Of these poems, Reid herself said: “I have struggled with the implications of war metaphors and the perspectives they perpetuate since receiving my own cancer diagnosis.
People living with cancer and other chronic illnesses are not taking up arms, they are living as long and as humanely as possible: not to win or lose, simply to live.” The scenes in these poems are rich and spare, magical and sane, awful and special: “one bird comes to the end of his branch looking like a clever moustache. /one bird comes to the end of his song like an ordinary bird.”
ANDREA WERBLIN REID (1965–2022) is the author of Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan, 2001) and Sunday with the Sound Turned Off (Lost Horse, 2014). Her poem “Language is the Virus” was named a finalist for the prestigious Perkoff Prize from the Missouri Review and her work has been published in the LA Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, Brooklyn Rail, Pank, Smartish Pace, and more.
THE COLOR OF WAITING
is hypnotic pink, under whose spell
you’ve been living for years
like a small fossilized creature.
or magenta, a bruise
that evolves,
(. . .)
then sharp as the serrated smiles
doctors have been honing for years.
waiting masquerades as the inflatable idea
of hope, waterproofed for safety, maybe,
devoid of vision, punctured that easily
To See Yourself as You Vanish
poetry by
Andrea Werblin Reid
Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series
Sales Date: 09-09-2025 !
88 Pages
Hardcover
ISBN 9780819502070
$26.95
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I’m Nobody!
Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d banish us – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Emily Dickinson
(1830—1886)
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
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Der Brief
Ein Fetzen Weh, vom Wind daher gefegt,
Das war er nun.
Ich hab’ ihn still ins heil’ge Buch gelegt,
Zu ruhn – zu ruhn—–
Und die vergilbten Blätter schlössen ihn
So linde ein,
Wie Totenhülle, weißer denn Jasmin,
Der braune Schrein.
So fern der Unrast, die da draußen tost,
Hat er geruht.
Und war der Klage voll und gab mir Trost
Er war so gut—–
Gertrud Kolmar
(1894 – 1943)
Der Brief
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De tuin is groener nog dan het woord
De tuin is groener nog dan het woord
vermoeden doet. Er in schommelt
een klein meisje zich naar de hemel,
ongehinderd door toevallige goden.
Morgen zal zij parmantig ter communie
gaan met om de schouder wit een tasje
vol onschuld, van oma gekregen.
Haar ogen zijn nog zonder hinderlagen.
Nog koestert zij de wortels om haar voeten,
laat zij zich door alle sprookjes tergen.
De grote vlucht is nog veraf.
Bert Bevers
De tuin is groener nog dan het woord
Verschenen in Preludium, jaargang 5, nummer 4,
Breda, maart 1989
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver
Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
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I Am The Reaper
I am the Reaper.
All things with heedful hook
Silent I gather.
Pale roses touched with the spring,
Tall corn in summer,
Fruits rich with autumn,
and frail winter blossoms—
Reaping, still reaping—
All things with heedful hook
Timely I gather.
I am the Sower.
All the unbodied life
Runs through my seed-sheet.
Atom with atom wed,
Each quickening the other,
Fall through my hands,
ever changing, still changeless.
Ceaselessly sowing,
Life, incorruptible life,
Flows from my seed-sheet.
Maker and breaker,
I am the ebb and the flood,
Here and Hereafter,
Sped through the tangle and coil
Of infinite nature,
Viewless and soundless
I fashion all being.
Taker and giver,
I am the womb and the grave,
The Now and the Ever
William Ernest Henley
(1849—1903)
I Am The Reaper
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One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two.
An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant.
She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere.
He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son.
Who is he to her, and who is she to him?
In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.
Katie Kitamura is the author of four previous novels, most recently A Separation and Intimacies, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for a Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Lannan fellowship, and many other honors, and her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.
Audition: A Novel
by Katie Kitamura (Author)
Language: English
Paperback
April 8, 2025
Publisher: Riverhead Books
EAN: 9798217045839
21,95 euro
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Eins und Alles
Im Grenzenlosen sich zu finden,
Wird gern der Einzelne verschwinden,
Da löst sich aller Überdruß;
Statt heißem Wünschen, wildem Wollen,
Statt läst’gem Fordern, strengem Sollen
Sich aufzugeben ist Genuß.
Weltseele, komm’ uns zu durchdringen!
Dann mit dem Weltgeist selbst zu ringen
Wird unsrer Kräfte Hochberuf.
Teilnehmend führen gute Geister,
Gelinde leitend, höchste Meister,
Zu dem, der alles schafft und schuf.
Und umzuschaffen das Geschaffne,
Damit sich’s nicht zum Starren waffne,
Wirkt ewiges lebend’ges Tun.
Und was nicht war, nun will es werden
Zu reinen Sonnen, farbigen Erden,
In keinem Falle darf es ruhn.
Es soll sich regen, schaffend handeln,
Erst sich gestalten, dann verwandeln;
Nur scheinbar steht’s Momente still.
Das Ewige regt sich fort in allen:
Denn alles muß in Nichts zerfallen,
Wenn es im Sein beharren will.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832)
Eins und Alles
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The daring and deeply sexy poems in Lonely Women Make Good Lovers are bold with the embodied, earthy, and startlingly sensual.
These unforgettable love poems—queer, complicated, and almost always compromised—engage a poetics of humility, leaning into the painful tendernesses of unbridgeable distance. As Kuipers writes, love is a question “defined not by what we / cannot know of the world but what we cannot know of ourselves.” These poems write into that intricate webbing between us, holding space for an “I” that is permeable, that can be touched and changed by those we make our lives with.
In this book, astonishingly intimate poems of marriage collide with the fetishization of freedom and the terror of desire. At times valiant and at others self-excoriating, they are flush with the hard-won knowledge of the difficulties and joys of living in relation.
Keetje Kuipers’ newest collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and POETRY, and have been honored by publication in The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She has been a Stegner Fellow, Bread Loaf Fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Kuipers lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is editor of Poetry Northwest.
Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
Poems
By Keetje Kuipers
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
April 8, 2025
Language: English
Paperback : 96 pages
ISBN-10: 1960145452
ISBN-13: 978-1960145451
Regular price €17,95
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My Life had stood
– a Loaded Gun
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified –
And carried Me away –
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods –
And now We hunt the Doe –
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply –
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow –
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through –
And when at Night – Our good Day done –
I guard My Master’s Head –
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow – to have shared –
To foe of His – I’m deadly foe –
None stir the second time –
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye –
Or an emphatic Thumb –
Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I –
For I have but the power to kill,
Without – the power to die –
Emily Dickinson
(1830—1886)
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun
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Answer Me
I
In from the night.
The storm is lifting his black arms up to the sky.
Friend of my heart, who so gently marks out the lifetrack for me, draw near to-night;
Forget the wailing of the low-voiced wind:
Shut out the moanings of the freezing, and the starving, and the dying, and bend your head low to me:
Clasp my cold, cold hands in yours;
Think of me tenderly and lovingly:
Look down into my eyes the while I question you, and if you love me, answer me—
Oh, answer me!
II
Is there not a gleam of Peace on all this tiresome earth?
Does not one oasis cheer all this desert-world?
When will all this toil and pain bring me the blessing?
Must I ever plead for help to do the work before me set?
Must I ever stumble and faint by the dark wayside?
Oh the dark, lonely wayside, with its dim-sheeted ghosts peering up through their shallow graves!
Must I ever tremble and pale at the great Beyond?
Must I find Rest only in your bosom, as now I do?
Answer me—
Oh, answer me!
III
Speak to me tenderly.
Think of me lovingly.
Let your soft hands smooth back my hair.
Take my cold, tear-stained face up to yours.
Let my lonely life creep into your warm bosom, knowing no other rest but this.
Let me question you, while sweet Faith and Trust are folding their white robes around me.
Thus am I purified, even to your love, that came like John the Baptist in the Wilderness of Sin.
You read the starry heavens, and lead me forth.
But tell me if, in this world’s Judea, there comes never quiet when once the heart awakes?
Why must it ever hush Love back?
Must it only labor, strive, and ache?
Has it no reward but this?
Has it no inheritance but to bear—and break?
Answer me—
Oh, answer me!
IV
The Storm struggles with the Darkness.
Folded away in your arms, how little do I heed their battle!
The trees clash in vain their naked swords against the door.
I go not forth while the low murmur of your voice is drifting all else back to silence.
The darkness presses his black forehead close to the window pane, and beckons me without.
Love holds a lamp in this little room that hath power to blot back Fear.
But will the lamp ever starve for oil?
Will its blood-red flame ever grow faint and blue?
Will it uprear itself to a slender line of light?
Will it grow pallid and motionless?
Will it sink rayless to everlasting death?
Answer me—
Oh, answer me!
V
Look at these tear-drops.
See how they quiver and die on your open hands.
Fold these white garments close to my breast, while I question you.
Would you have me think that from the warm shelter of your heart I must go to the grave?
And when I am lying in my silent shroud, will you love me?
When I am buried down in the cold, wet earth, will you grieve that you did not save me?
Will your tears reach my pale face through all the withered leaves that will heap themselves upon my grave?
Will you repent that you loosened your arms to let me fall so deep, and so far out of sight?
Will you come and tell me so, when the coffin has shut out the storm?
Answer me—
Oh, answer me!
Adah Isaacs Menken
(1835 – 1868)
Answer Me
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Philine
Singet nicht in Trauertönen
Von der Einsamkeit der Nacht!
Nein, sie ist, o holde Schönen,
Zur Geselligkeit gemacht.
Wie das Weib dem Mann gegeben
Als die schönste Hälfte war,
Ist die Nacht das halbe Leben,
Und die schönste Hälfte zwar.
Könnt ihr euch des Tages freuen,
Der nur Freuden unterbricht?
Er ist gut, sich zu zerstreuen;
Zu was anderm taugt er nicht.
Aber wenn in nächt′ger Stunde
Süßer Lampe Dämmrung fließt,
Und vom Mund zum nahen Munde
Scherz und Liebe sich ergießt;
Wenn der rasche lose Knabe,
Der sonst wild und feurig eilt,
Oft bei einer kleinen Gabe
Unter leichten Spielen weilt;
Wenn die Nachtigall Verliebten
Liebevoll ein Liedchen singt,
Das Gefangnen und Betrübten
Nur wie Ach und Wehe klingt:
Mit wie leichtem Herzensregen
Horchet ihr der Glocke nicht,
Die mit zwölf bedächt′gen Schlägen
Ruh′ und Sicherheit verspricht!
Darum an dem langen Tage
Merke dir es, liebe Brust:
Jeder Tag hat seine Plage,
Und die Nacht hat ihre Lust.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832)
Philine
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Because I could not stop
for Death
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Emily Dickinson
(1830—1886)
Because I could not stop for Death
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