Tony Hoagland died of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer on October 23, 2018. He knew he had the cancer for only two years because this kind is hard to diagnose before it becomes terminal. Pancreatic cancer is potentially curable if the cancer is caught early, is on the head of the pancreas, and it hasn’t spread, then it can be surgically removed, followed by a course of chemotherapy.
Reading the poetry of Andrea Gibson is like coming out of a thick, brambled forest and seeing the beauty of the mountains rising all around you.
Andrea Gibson (they/them) died in July 2025 at age 49 after four years of dealing with ovarian cancer, but cancer will never be Andrea’s story. Before this, Andrea struggled with the serious side effects of Lyme disease and this ushered in a deeper understanding of the suffering that others go through because of chronic illnesses and disabilities.
Not all of us are poets, of course, and not all of us would take time away from living our last months to look for the words to express what we are feeling and thinking. Rather than write, we may want to complete items from our bucket list that we’ve kept putting off, or focus on sharing everything we’ve learned about life with our children. Maybe we want to stop trying to achieve goals and simply enjoy each day free of outside expectations.
Katie Farris, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, Alice James Books, 2023
Katie Farris showed up on my doorstep the other day, with poetry she’d written about her experiences with Stage 3 breast cancer. It’s about time, I thought. Elizabeth Boleman-Herring put up a post about Farris and her book. It intrigued me enough to order a copy.
I was thankful because I’ve been dealing with Stage 3b prostate cancer that expanded locally for over two years, and my emotions and struggles have been all over the place. It’s a reciprocal cancer – 1 in 8 American women get breast cancer while 1 in 8 American men get prostate cancer.
