Standing in the Forest of Being Alive: A Memoir in Poems

This potent offering focuses on the parts of experience that “pull our lives taut.” Pushcart Prize winner Farris (boysgirls) was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 36 against the backdrop of a global pandemic and a national moment so divided and contentious that, as she observes, “Everyone is writing about a country/ as if a country existed.” Conveying how a large part of illness is the time in which, seemingly, nothing happens, she writes about sitting in waiting rooms and the stress of awaiting the results of a test or procedure: “Turn on the light at 2 am;/ the waiting stands, hand/ on your head./ A most maternal haunting.” In “Scheduling the Bone Scan,” she ponders, “The word ‘bone’ tolls in your ear,/ a bell. What tolls? The word, the bone?” In another, Farris realizes that pregnancy rhymes with mastectomy. Undergoing cancer treatment while her friends are having children offers its own painful parallels: “both of us harboring rapidly dividing cells, so near our hearts./ How’s that for art?” Farris finds refuge in the seasons and in the fragile natural world. Through its ruminative urgency and Farris’s keen observations, this collection puts the world into sharp and wondrous focus. (Apr.)