Summary:

In language of the street and of the heart, Belle Waring has put together another wonderful (her second) collection of poems (see annotation of Refuge, her first collection). She writes of relationships starting and ending; her work experience as a nurse--the powerful "It Was My First Nursing Job," "From the Diary of a Clinic Nurse, Poland, 1945," and "Twenty-Four Week Preemie, Change of Shift"; and other miraculous everyday events of living with eyes wide open as exemplified in "The Brothers on the Trash Truck and my Near-Death Experience" and "Fever, Mood, and Crows."

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Summary:

Lainey's husband, Jay, has been in a coma for weeks, now extending into months. She takes care of their daughters, visits him daily, finds what solace is possible with her resilient, tough-minded, and compassionate neighbor, Alice, and continues to believe he will wake up when the medical staff have largely given up hope.

As she sits with him, trying to adjust and foster her hopes, bringing familiar smells, textures, and sounds from home in the hope of triggering response, she imagines his state of mind. Interludes that work a little like prose poems suggest something of the liminal state he may inhabit. Lainey meets a fellow visitor at the nursing home whose wife dies after having been comatose for 6 months.

Lainey's life is kept from complete inward focus by Alice's efforts to keep her going out, and by Alice's own problems which include a straying husband who finally reveals that he's been struggling with homosexuality and has fallen in love with another man. Jay finally awakens and life returns to something like normal, but with an abiding awareness of the mystery of consciousness and memory, and a heightened sense of the preciousness of consciousness, choice, and the ordinariness of daily life.

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Summary:

This is a collection of 111 poems, all about women who are old. As the editor says in her introduction, it is not a book about becoming old, but about being old, and the book bears the pointed reminder that an old woman is still a woman, as well as being old (vii). The poems are arranged in ten sections, from portraits of old women (usually grandmothers, here) as seen by the young, through explorations of their work and wisdom, their relationships and sexuality, the vivid and sometimes shocking realities of their bodies, their illnesses and weaknesses, institutionalization and nursing homes, and finally, their confrontations with death and the sense of loss in those they leave behind.

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Summary:

A very accessible collection of poems with wonderful use of language and very strong imagery. Some, in particular "Baby Random" and "Between Rounds" offer a nurse’s perspective on caregiving. Other themes include abuse and abusive relationships, married and unmarried life, and in general the seeking and giving of refuge. There are also recurring figures/persons throughout the collection which give the work an almost narrative flow.

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Summary:

This play is based on the life of John Merrick, a horribly deformed man who lived in London in the late 19th century. After being abandoned by the traveling freak show in which he had been exhibited, he was admitted to Whitechapel Hospital under the care of Dr. Frederick Treves. Merrick is given a permanent home in the hospital.

Treves educates him and introduces him to London society, including the famous actress, Mrs. Kendal. Merrick becomes quite the favorite of the "in" group. However, as he learns more about society and human nature, he realizes that he will never be accepted simply as an ordinary person. Eventually, he dies in his sleep, presumably because he tries to sleep lying down (like ordinary people do) and the size and position of his enormous head compresses his windpipe and he suffocates.

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Summary:

Smiley's novel, King Lear (see King Lear in this database) with a shocking twist, portrays the enduring violence of incest to body and spirit. The narrative voice describes her family--a wealthy farmer and his three daughters. Family relationships are explored, especially the hidden roots that shape and define behaviors and conflicts, some lasting a lifetime.

The disclosure of a horribly dark secret explains the personalities of the three daughters and, for two, their metaphoric afflictions (infertility and breast cancer). Smiley's novel is layered with rich complexities, but none more powerful and astonishing than the core event, the sexual victimization of two vulnerable teenage girls who, as the story unfolds, are permanently scarred. Through a reinterpretation of Lear, Smiley demonstrates the cost of this hideous form of male domination and female victimization.

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Lol Stein is 19 years old and engaged to be married. At the town ball, her fiance leaves her and runs away with a beautiful stranger. Lol withdraws into herself, but seems not to feel much pain. In fact, she subsequently lives her life in a dull, almost-numb state, never really interacting with people nor experiencing feelings (pain or joy). She falls into a loveless marriage and has children.

After ten years she encounters a school friend, Tatiana Karl, who had been with her at the town ball. Tatiana also has a loveless marriage, but has taken a lover, the young doctor Jacques Hold. There is a strong attraction between Lol and Jacques and they have an affair, but she remains peculiarly abstracted and estranged from life.

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In her youth, Mrs. Palfrey had been a model British woman. She married a military man, moved to Borneo and lived happily and properly, giving direction to the natives. She and her husband retired in Britain. Now, however, Mrs. Palfrey is a widow. Her daughter Elizabeth, who lives in Scotland, has not invited her to stay and she is not sure she would want to. Instead, she courageously decides to move into the Claremont Hotel in London, where she meets the other permanent residents who, like herself, are old and rather poor.

Mrs. Palfrey gets the attention and envy of the group when she tells them that her oldest grandchild and heir, Desmond, works at The British Museum and will undoubtedly be coming to visit. He never comes.

One day as Mrs. Palfrey is out for a walk, she falls. A young man, Ludovic Myers (Ludo), comes out of his basement apartment to help her. He takes her inside, doctors her knee, and gives her a cup of tea. He is trying to write a book and finds her an excellent study.

Mrs. Palfrey asks him to pretend to be Desmond so that she can save her reputation. He agrees. Mrs. Palfrey fancies that she is in love with him. They meet rarely, though once he invites her to dinner at his house. He makes an otherwise lonely and dull existence exciting. He is the only one who visits The Claremont without immediately rushing out, feeling as if a terrible duty has been fulfilled.

When one of the older residents at The Claremont becomes incontinent, the management forces her to move. She dies quickly, alone in an understaffed nursing home. Mrs. Palfrey has another fall and winds up in the hospital. Ludo comes to see her; he spends more time with her than any of her family.

She dies.

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Summary:

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, while her father fights for the Republicans against Franco's forces which her deceased mother's family supports, fourteen-year-old Matia is forced to leave her elderly nanny and go to live with her maternal grandmother, aunt, and her fifteen-year-old male cousin, Borja. This is the summer the frightened, rebellious, and homesick Matia struggles with her changing body, and the changing relationships and behaviors she must have as a woman in her society. This is the summer Matia learns of social class, politics, sex, and family secrets; of love, honor, and betrayal.

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Summary:

The speaker, the "barren woman" of the poem, describes her state as empty. She likens herself to a deserted space, a "museum without statues," at its center a fountain which, rather than issuing life, recycles its water, which "sinks back into itself." She imagines herself as a mother, but recognizes that "nothing can happen." The only one who pays attention is the moon, silently but ineffectually trying to soothe her. (10 lines)

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