The Radiation Sonnets

Beautiful, intimate, hopeful, and even funny, The Radiation Sonnets speaks to all of us who have battled illness with a loved one. 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, Yolen's writing became her emotional lifeline. Every evening, during the forty-three days that her husband, David, underwent radiation therapy, Yolen would retreat to her attic and pour out the day's events -- as well as her thoughts, fears, and love -- into sonnets, fourteen lines of rhymed verse. The result is a remarkable sequence of uncommonly intimate, unexpectedly humorous, and deeply healing poems that chronicle her family's journey through trauma and toward recovery. When Yolen read some of these sonnets on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, there was an immediate outpouring of support from listeners -- among them cancer patients and their families, doctors, nurses, and therapists. The poems speak of Yolen's ambivalence about medical technology, her anger at the gods, her joy in small victories, her acknowledgment of life's utter precariousness, and her refusal to give up hope. Her words are a tribute to a long and loving marriage as well as to the selflessness of the caretaker. For caregivers and survivors alike, The Radiation Sonnets is a triumphant celebration of strength and spirit.


Genre: Literary Fiction