My recent bout with the flu has me revisiting Heart of Darkness. It may not be malaria but it’s plenty unpleasant.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Tag Archives: Illness
Wheezles and Sneezles
For anyone with a bad head cold, A. A. Milne’s “Sneezles” is the poem for you.
Help! My Mom’s Having Trouble Reading
In today’s post I seek advice for a woman who wants to keep reading but has had a stroke.
Sickness Strikes Again
I my recent bout with Covid, passages from “Heart of Darkness” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” came to mind.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Comments closed
Mother and Son in a Daily Dance of Pain
As I lift up my mother from her sick bed, I sometimes think of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” even though the situations are markedly different.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "My Papa's Waltz", Covid 19, old age, Parent-child relationships, Theodore Roethke Comments closed
Illness in 19th Century Lit
19th century literature is filled with images of illness. Reading it should make us grateful to the advances in medical science.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bleak House, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, epidemics, fathers and sons, Francis Hodgson Burnett, George Eliot, Ivan Turgenev, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Middlemarch, North and South, pandemics, Secret Garden Comments closed
Clifton Poems Make Connection Possible
In a recent event honoring the memory of Lucille Clifton, poet Toi Derricotte read a poem about how Clifton’s poetry opened up a relationship with the mother of a sick child. Here I share Derricotte’s poem as well as the poems she read to the mother and examine why they had the effect they did.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "I was born with twelve fingers", "in the inner city", cancer, Lucille Clifton, Toi Derricotte Comments closed