Bibliography of poetry collections

In this blog post, poet Celeste Lipkes recommends poems she characterizes as “confronting difficult-to-discuss medical diagnoses.”  Her list includes a variety of conditions and the poems are written from a variety of perspectives, including health care providers, family members, and patients.  She provides a brief synopsis of each collection, including examples.

She reviews (and provides links to purchase) the following poetry collections:

  • Radium Girl by Celeste Lipkes: A physician writes about her experience as a young woman with Crohn’s disease
  • Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen: A man writes about his brother’s suicide
  • Big–Eyed Afraid by Erica Dawson: A black woman writes about her experiences of bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder
  • Blue Sonoma by Jane Munro: A wife writes about the progression of her husband’s Alzheimers
  • We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders by Pamela Spiro Wagner: A woman writes about her experience of schizophrenia
  • The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle by Tom Andrews: A motocross racer writes about having hemophilia
  • Deluge by Leila Chatti addresses medical care for women’s reproductive health, including her treatment for heavy uterine bleeding
  • The Tradition by Jericho Brown: A black man writes about, among other things, his HIV diagnosis
  • Impossible Bottle by Claudia Emerson: poems published posthumously by a woman who died from cancer
  • Still Life by Jay Hopler: poems published posthumously by a man who died from prostate cancer

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