This elegant and moving collection documents Hilda Raz's experience with breast cancer. The journey, from diagnosis to chemotherapy to mastectomy, from denial to humor to grief and rage, is ultimately one of courage and creativity. The poems themselves are accessible and finely wrought. They are equally testaments to Raz's insistence on making an order out of chaos, of finding ways to create and understand and eventually accept new definitions of good and evil, health, blame, and personal boundaries--in short, a new sense of self. These poems remain intimately bound to the world and of the senses, becoming documents of transformation.
Hilda Raz
is a former editor of
Prairie Schooner
and is the founding director of the Prairie Schooner Book Prizes. She was named the first Luschei Professor and Editor in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Raz is the poetry editor for the University of New Mexico Press,
ABQ (in)Print
, and Bosque Press. She is the author or editor of fourteen books, including her most recent book,
Letter from a Place I've Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986-2020
, as well as
All Odd and Splendid
,
Trans
What Happens
, and
What Becomes You
(with Aaron Raz Link), all available from the University of Nebraska Press.