Tag Archives: Gail Godwin

Art Goes Where Humans Can’t

A dying professor in Gail Godwin’s novel “The Good Husband” turns to John Donne’s “Second Anniversary” to comfort her.

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Facing Up to the Gargoyle of Cancer

One of my students is exploring her mother’s terminal illness, and her own grieving, through Gail Godwin’s novel “The Good Husband.”

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Now for Something Completely Different

Georgia O’Keefe This past week I seem to have taken as a challenge Elaine Scarry’s observation (in The Body in Pain) that representations of physical pain in literature are rare. Two more I add to the list are the Blake professor in Gail Godwin’s The Good Husband, who is dying of cancer, and Rosie, the […]

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Death and Language’s Limitations

In spending the last two weeks discussing how poetry can come to our aid in a season of death, I have been exploring how poetry responds to its greatest test. Death and dying can trigger our deepest fears, generate panic, denial and anger, prompt us to question everything we believe in, and send on frantic […]

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