Blue Peninsula
Essential Words for a Life of Loss and Change
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"My son's illness is eight years old and has no name. It started when he was fourteen. He is now twenty-two. It is taking away his ability to walk and to reason. It is getting worse, some years more rapidly than others."
These words begin the first section of Blue Peninsula, a narrative of a son's degenerative illness in thirty-three parts focused around poems that have provided companionship and sustenance to the author. When multiple diagnostic avenues delivered no explanation for the worsening disabilities of her older son, Ike, Madge McKeithen "became a poetry addict--collecting, consuming, ripping poems out of magazines, buying slender volumes that would fit in my pocket or pocketbook, stashing them in loose-leaf notebooks, on shelves, stacking them on the floor. In the midst of all this grief, I had fallen in love. With words. Poems, especially. And just in time."
McKeithen draws on a wonderfully wide ranging group of of poets and lyricists--including Emily Dickinson, the Rolling Stones, Paul Celan, Bruce Springsteen, Marie Howe, Walt Whitman, and many others--to illuminate, comfort, and help to express her sorrow. Some chapters are reflections on friendships and family relationships in the context of a chronic and worsening illness. Some consider making peace with what life has dealt, and others value intentionally reworking it.
Not written to suggest easy solace, this powerful work aims to keep company, as would any individual whose loved one is on a course in which the only way out is through.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stiffening of McKeithen's eldest son Ike's legs was the first symptom of an undiagnosable disease that would gradually debilitate the 14-year-old with ever-worsening maladies: brain atrophy, dementia and blood abnormalities (though he's still alive). McKeithen, a former teacher, researcher and editor, renders the first eight years of her life strained by Ike's illness; she watches Ike's physical pains increase and social abilities decline, worries over her other son's reaction, loses connections with friends and alters plans for Ike's future (her husband isn't mentioned much). More significantly, the book chronicles McKeithen's love affair with poetry. Each chapter opens with a poem from an eclectic range of bards to whom the author looks for answers: Paul Celan, Emily Dickinson, George McDonald, Walt Whitman. Some put words to emotions that feel indescribable; some provide guidance unattainable elsewhere; some propose hope in the most dire moments. Dissecting the poems as meticulously as she does her son's disease, McKeithen finds the multiplicity in poetry enables her to shift her perspective and approach reality from different angles. For instance, poetry's permission to elude a singular meaning comforts her anxiety over Ike's fate and excuses the lack of explanation for his illness. Readers will come away reminded of poetry's powerful ability to enlighten personal struggles.