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A review by darrin
Sun in Days: Poems by Meghan O'Rourke
5.0
One of the shelves in the new books section of our library is devoted to poetry. Mainly the small publications...the chapbooks and slim volumes that poets publish but also the occasional larger collection. I have decided to pick a random selection off this shelf once a month to familiarize myself with a new poet.
Meghan O'Rourke's Sun in Days: Poems is the first book I chose and what a good choice it was. I liked the cover first of all and the first couple of poems hooked me almost immediately. These are very personal poems about regret, dissatisfaction with herself, with her body, poems about chronic illness and pain and feelings of looking at herself as if she were on the outside looking in and poems about loss.
A couple of favorites...the eponymous poem, Sun in Days....a poem of childhood memories, some better than others, memories of her parents, melancholy, bittersweet....
Mnemonic...My favorite lines are, "What have I done with this year of living? I fretted & fanged, was a kind of slang of myself." I love this last line...reminds me of 2017.
A Note on Process...which begins with the author watching a gymnast on Youtube, all the while, comparing herself to the gymnast and the medical processes she is going through as a patient with a chronic disease being treated in a hospital.
Looking at her bio and bibliography I noted a memoir called A Long Goodbye about the death of her mother that I put on my to-read list and now have home from the library. I am looking forward to starting this book soon.
Meghan O'Rourke's Sun in Days: Poems is the first book I chose and what a good choice it was. I liked the cover first of all and the first couple of poems hooked me almost immediately. These are very personal poems about regret, dissatisfaction with herself, with her body, poems about chronic illness and pain and feelings of looking at herself as if she were on the outside looking in and poems about loss.
A couple of favorites...the eponymous poem, Sun in Days....a poem of childhood memories, some better than others, memories of her parents, melancholy, bittersweet....
Mnemonic...My favorite lines are, "What have I done with this year of living? I fretted & fanged, was a kind of slang of myself." I love this last line...reminds me of 2017.
A Note on Process...which begins with the author watching a gymnast on Youtube, all the while, comparing herself to the gymnast and the medical processes she is going through as a patient with a chronic disease being treated in a hospital.
Looking at her bio and bibliography I noted a memoir called A Long Goodbye about the death of her mother that I put on my to-read list and now have home from the library. I am looking forward to starting this book soon.