The Radiation Sonnets: For My Love in Sickness and in Health by Jane Yolen. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books; 2003. 104 pages, hardback, $14.95.
"One poem alone at bedtime completes my night" (Day 32) are the words of Jane Yolen, a renowned children's book author and poet who wrote The Radiation Sonnets: For My Love in Sickness and in Health as a daily diary to vent her feelings and help her cope with her husband's radiation treatments for an inoperable cancerous skull tumor. The daily-written sonnets coincided with the 43 days of radiation treatments. Originally, the poems were not written nor intended for an audience or publication, but were eventually printed with her husband's permission in response to requests from her writers' group and from listeners who heard them read on National Public Radio.
The book is 5 x 7 inches, easily carried and read. Although I read the book completely, in 1 sitting, each time I read it; the book takes much longer to digest. There is an introduction, "The Beginning," and a concluding section, "An After," which gives the book a context. There are neither pictures nor page numbers, just a daily chronicling of the author's feelings and emotions, which run the gamut from cautiously optimistic, uplifting and celebratory to despair, anger, frustration and resignation. The reader's heart aches while sensing the writer's pain. Although the author does not say anything new, she says it so well.
The various sonnets' contents revolve around the titles' topics. There are sonnets about skull mapping, hair, the waiting room, holidays, expectations, and escaping. There are some sonnets that relate to notable times such as "A Bad Day (Day 28)":
One bad day in ten, I can't complain
Though it's a misery to see you low;
"An Additional Week of Radiation (Day 27)," "One More Week (Day 33)," and the last day, which is referred to as "Graduation Day." The recurring theme of the "Food Wars" deal with the author's attempt to feed her husband and his reluctance or inability to eat:
Today you did not want to eat.
We knew this day would come.
On Day 18, the author writes about relinquishing some control in "Letting Go":
A friend drove you today, I did not go.
An ache remains, a pinprick in my breast.
Reminding me just what I ought to know:
The caretaker, as well, still needs her rest.
[horizontal ellipsis] [horizontal ellipsis] [horizontal ellipsis]
Then help me love, to sigh and let you go
If terror, time, and tumor make it so.
My favorite is the ode to candies, "Sucking Candies (Day 8)," that helped give the author's husband some relief.
The Radiation Sonnets: For My Love in Sickness and in Health is useful to anyone who has experienced personally, or through a family member or friend undergoing radiation treatments, as they can easily relate to many of the subjects raised in the book's 14 line poems. In addition, those who work with and treat individuals in radiation therapy would benefit from reading the book so that they could recommend it to others.
Lenore B. Weinstein, MA, RN
Adjunct Associate Professor, Marquette University School of Dentistry, Milwaukee, Wis