Poets and Poems: Autumn Williams and "Clouds on the Ground"

Myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Its symptoms include extreme exhaustion, memory problems, dizziness, and muscle and joint pain. It can also cause sleep problems. The cause is unknown, but it’s believed to result from a combination of factors, including genetics, infections, trauma, and body metabolism.  

Poet Autumn Williams has ME. She’s had it for 11 years. In 2021, her condition worsened to the point where she became almost completely bedbound. She turned to writing poetry. It is not so much poetry about ME as it is poetry inspired by the condition. To date, she’s published two collections, a chapbook entitled Wave and Clouds on the Ground.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Seeking Out Time – poem by David Whyte.

 

“The Map of Places,” poem by Laura Riding – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“I Have Been Acquainted with the Night,” poem by Robert Frost – Anothony Esolen at Word & Song.

Poets and Poems: Alison Blevins and “Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down?”

We’re familiar with the meaning of chronic illness. The most common types are cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, diseases with no known cures. They can often be mitigated and their effects reduced or controlled, but that doesn’t mean they’re eliminated, or that they no longer have to be dealt with and lived with.  

The impact of chronic illness on families can be devastating, disrupting and forever changing the patterns of daily life and relationships and often fundamentally changing the relationships themselves. That is what Alison Blevins explores in Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down?: Poems, a collection of 62 untitled prose poems in paragraph form. Collectively, the poems read like a fable of contemporary life.

To continue reading, please see my post day at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A War Over Heaven and Hell – Dana Gioia reviews Paradise Lost: A Biography at The Wall Street Journal.

 

The states(s) of the world: What a poem can and cannot do – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

Arnold Bennet’s ten step plan for learning to appreciate poetry – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Vanish O Night – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

“Whoso List to Hunt,” poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Ocean (excerpt) – poem by Jessica Cohn at Every Day Poems.

"Finding Purpose" by Cindee Snider Re

In 2011, I was planting a small perennial in our garden. As I finished, I stood up, and a pain shot through my back that nearly knocked me down. I thought I had pulled a muscle. What I would find out was that I had a ruptured disk. For the next seven to eight months, pain became my constant companion.

Simple things – taking a shower, putting on socks, tying shoelaces, getting into a car – became tests of “how to do it without yelling in pain.” Walking at a 30-degree angle, I used a cane, which helped. To walk from handicapped parking, carrying my laptop case was a challenge. Rainy days, requiring an umbrella, made the walk a struggle.

I was prescribed opiods, which helped. But the pain never really went away. I knew there must be a point to all of this – something to learn or understand. I kept telling myself there had to be a point. The pain was changing my personality (ask my wife). It didn’t help to hear a senior executive tell me I would never really be healed.

My experience was seven years too early for Finding Purpose: Rediscovering Meaning in a Life with Chronic Illness by Cindee Snifer Re. She knows what it is to live with chronic illness; she has Ehlers-Danlos, a genetic connective tissue disorder accompanied by a host of co-existing conditions. Four of Re’s five children also have Ehlers-Danlos.

Re could have slipped permanently into despair and depression, and there likely have been times when she’s experienced both. But she made a choice to find purpose in what was happening to her and her family, and to go on to help found Chronic Joy, a ministry aimed squarely at people who live with chronic illness.

Finding Purpose is the second of four books/workbooks addressing chronic illness. The first was Discovering Hope: Beginning the Journey Toward Hope in Chronic Illness, published in 2016, and the third, Embracing Worth, will be published later this year. The fourth, Encountering Joy, will be published next year.

The book contains 10 chapters. Each is structured roughly the same: a short introduction, often a story or anecdote; questions to answer and a Bible verse to consider; an assignment or two for the week; and pages available for journal entries. The 10 topics covered are presence, lectio divina, willingness, surrender, love, purpose, refining, attitude, contentment, and choice. The book also contains an appendix of resources, including pointers for creating discussion groups, how to build a local ministry, and other helpful tools.

Cindee Snider Re

Re knows of what she speaks. She’s lived this. And she’s lived each of the entries in this book. Finding Purpose is a great resource for anyone living with chronic pain – and anyone living with a person who deals daily with chronic pain.

In my own case, two things happened. Elders and pastors at my church prayed over me and my back. And my ruptured disk eventually did what happens 70 percent of the time – it dissolved. It took a few months for my brain to understand that the cause of the pain was removed. But I was susceptible to reinjuring my back, and it was through the help of physical therapists and a personal trainer that I learned how to do things differently. I still had to be careful; my back went out when we were in London in 2014, and the pain was excruciating.

But Re is right. It is possible to fund purpose with chronic illness. It doesn’t make the pain or the severity of the illness better. But it does allow you to understand and deal with it.

Top photograph by Jonatan Pie via Unsplash. Used with permission.