Overview
When one of America's best-loved, bestselling authors faces a life-altering crisis, she responds by creating a remarkable sequence of poems that offers hope and reassurance to others seeking comfort.
Jane Yolen has spent her life giving enjoyment to millions of readers with her award-winning books and poems. But when her husband was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor in his skull, she began to write to find solace. For the forty-three days that David underwent radiation treatment, Jane spent each night pouring her emotions into a sonnet. It was the only part of the day over which she felt she had any control. When Jane read some of those poems on NPR's All Things Considered, there was an immediate outpouring of support and a clamoring for her work from cancer patients, those who treat and care for them, and those listeners simply moved by her words. The Radiation Sonnets is for them.
The poems reflect not only what happened on a particular day--the naps and nausea, visits from family and friends, Jane's struggle to get food into her weakened husband--but also tell a larger story: of her deep love for her husband, her ambivalence about medical technology, her joy in small victories, her acknowledgment of life's utter precariousness, her humor in the face of fear, and her refusal to give up hope.
For caregivers and survivors alike, for anyone whose life has been touched by illness, The Radiation Sonnets is a triumphant celebration of the human spirit.
Synopsis
When one of America's best-loved, bestselling authors faces a life-altering crisis, she responds by creating a remarkable sequence of poems that offers hope and reassurance to others seeking comfort.
Jane Yolen has spent her life giving enjoyment to millions of readers with her award-winning books and poems. But when her husband was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor in his skull, she began to write to find solace. For the forty-three days that David underwent radiation treatment, Jane spent each night pouring her emotions into a sonnet. It was the only part of the day over which she felt she had any control. When Jane read some of those poems on NPR's All Things Considered, there was an immediate outpouring of support and a clamoring for her work from cancer patients, those who treat and care for them, and those listeners simply moved by her words. The Radiation Sonnets is for them.
The poems reflect not only what happened on a particular day--the naps and nausea, visits from family and friends, Jane's struggle to get food into her weakened husband--but also tell a larger story: of her deep love for her husband, her ambivalence about medical technology, her joy in small victories, her acknowledgment of life's utter precariousness, her humor in the face of fear, and her refusal to give up hope.
For caregivers and survivors alike, for anyone whose life has been touched by illness, The Radiation Sonnets is a triumphant celebration of the human spirit.
Publishers Weekly
These 43 sonnets by Yolen, a bestselling children's author (How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?), are written in the traditional rhymed form with three quatrains and a couplet. After her husband, David, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, she found that composing a sonnet every night, when he was undergoing daily radiation treatments, was a discipline that helped her get through this difficult time. Through her poetry, she deals with emotionally painful issues, such as the changes in her husband's appearance, the suffering he was experiencing and the love and concern they felt for one another during this time. Yolen beautifully conveys the distance that can come between an ill person and his or her caretaker when both formerly lived as healthy partners. Other sonnets describe the effect of David's illness on their grown children and Yolen's fear that he would not survive. Several inclusions describe her sometimes ineffectual attempts to encourage David to eat more. Best read as verse-memoir, this short collection is a welcome addition to the many books written about coping with illness and death. National publicity; author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.