My Wobbly Bicycle: Meditations on Cancer and the Creative Life
Mission Point Press 2016
In this book full of pain and joy and raw honesty, Fleda Brown, poet and former poet laureate of Delaware, gives us a real-time account of her cancer diagnosis, chemo and radiation, from the doctor’s phone call to the one-year, all-clear pronouncement.
Now everything’s shifted. We pretend there’s some solidity, some predictability. But being alive is more like riding a bicycle, balancing on two thin tires. Eventually we’ll fall one way or the other, but for the moment, we’re upright. It’s exciting, sometimes frightening.
Brown’s week to week accounts lead to the realization that one needs to face a wall-sometimes the wall of possible death-to see clearly. With great generosity, she allows the reader to come along through the darkness and the light.