Standing in the Forest of Being Alive / Katie Farris.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Farris, Katie, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Breast--Cancer--Treatment--Poetry.

Breast.

Farris, Katie--Poetry.

Farris, Katie.

Genre:

Autobiographical poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (62 pages)

Place of Publication:

New Gloucester, ME : Alice James Books, Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc., [2023]

Summary:

"Standing in the Forest of Being Alive is a memoir-in-poems that reckons with erotic love even as the narrator is diagnosed and treated for breast cancer at the age of thirty-six during a time of pandemic and political upheaval. With humor and honesty, the book portrays both the pleasures and the horrors of the lover, the citizen, and the medical subject. How can we find, in the midst of hell, what isn't hell? And whom can we tell how much we want to live? An intimate, hilarious and devastating look into some of the most private moments of a life-even if they happen to occur in a medical office with six strangers looking on. This book is for anyone who's ever asked how to live in the face of suffering, and doesn't expect an easy answer. Standing in the Forest of Being Alive looks unflinchingly at painful realities, posing the question 'What isn't hell?' and finds the answer in a powerful eros, letting a loved one pull laughter out of the narrator's reluctant mouth like a 'redvioletcerulean handkerchief'"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World

Tell It Slant

When You Walk over the Earth

On the Morning of the Port Surgery

In the Event of My Death

The Man You Are the Boy You Are

If Marriage

A Row of Rows

In the Early Days of a Global Pandemic

Finishing Emily Dickinson, First Deacon in William Blake's Church of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in the Oncologist's Waiting Room

Outside Atlanta Cancer Care

Eros Haiku

An Unexpected Turn of Events Midway through Chemotherapy

Rachel's Chair

The Invention of America

Quid Pro Quo: A Dedication

Pirate Haiku

Emiloma: A Riddle &amp

an Answer

Ode to Money, or Patient Appealing Health Insurance for Denial of Coverage

A Week before Surgery, I Practice My Body

I Wake to Find You Wandering the Museum of My Body

Come to Me

To the Pathologist Reading My Breast, Palimpsest

Five Days before the Mastectomy, Insurrection at the Capitol

After the Mastectomy

Woman with Amputated Breast Awaits PET Scan Results

Woman with Amputated Breast at her Mother-in-Law's Grave

Ilya, Orphaned, after the Bough Fell through Our Roof

The Wheel

Woman with Amputated Breast Returns for her Injection

Standing in the Forest of Being Alive

Irony

Scheduling the Bone Scan

Contrition

In the Shadow of This Valley

Said the High Priestess to the Magician

Against Loss

To the God of Radiation

Ice for Me

What Would Root

Acknowledgments

About the Author.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Farris, Katie Standing in the Forest of Being Alive

ISBN:

9781949944235

OCLC:

1377818534