LatinosUSA

The book’s title Cancer Courts My Mother —LindaAnn LoSchiavo— suggests an extended metaphor. The tenor, cancer, is a suitor. A suitor is defined as a man who courts a woman. Although the title suggests otherwise, the woman the suitor courts is the daughter, the poet. In «Arrival» she says, «I know he’s made himself at home, the dark prince …conveying her into his sunless realm.» Yes, death is conveying the mother but it’s daughter who knows. And she is the one being courted, the one who hears the dark prince’s seductive whispers, the one for whom «terminal illness / twirls out of the speech of men.» At the end of «Tick Tick» she says, «Cancer, biding his time, taunts me.» In «Early Visit from the Grim Reaper,» «His baritone commanded me to GO!» In the «Bartering with Cancer,» the octave begins with «When medicine has nothing more to give / There’s only daughters and morphine…»And in the turn, the second half, she says, «I’m stunned.» In «Jaundice,» she says, «my mother wound up with him -Cancer -,» but in the realm of life, cancer courts the daughter, the maker of these poems.

To consider the voice in the poems is to consider the speaker, a poet facing the grim reality that many of her reading audience have faced or will face: cancer kills. The poet’s mother’s suffering is terminal; then there’s her father’s suffering and her own. Her voice, what is said, and how, reflects the human heart in conflict with itself. Signs that say Fuck Cancer are brandished by people who hate the thing that is killing their love ones. I love, I hate -they suggest, conveying that conflict. The poet’s «realities» she «could escape to» suggests her speaking, and putting pen to paper is cathartic. She is also defiant. In «Early Visit, «the reaper says, «GO! She says «No!»

Cancer took her mother. A mother’s suffering and eventual absence, left a daughter and a spouse/ father to grieve. The poet’s grief is poignantly conveyed throughout this sequence. Towards the end she says, «When my mother died, she took home along with her.» ― A Synopsis of the review by Peter Mladinic, Author of «The Whitestone Brdge»

When an adult child becomes caretaker for a parent with cancer, family dynamics shift profoundly. In «Cancer Courts My Mother,» LindaAnn LoSchiavo captures this complex journey through poetry that balances tenderness with brutal honesty. She navigates caregiving challenges with grace, inviting readers to witness the delicate interplay of love and fear while portraying her mother as a fully realized, complex human being. The journey isn’t pretty-sometimes the words are fierce-but this collection digs deep into universal experiences of loss and care. ― Kellie Scott Reed, Poetry Editor, Roi Fainéant

In «Cancer Courts My Mother,» LindaAnn LoSchiavo chronicles an emotional journey through varied poetic forms. She weaves a metaphor of nurturing plants back to life while her mother finds remission, then faces cancer’s return. The collection reconciles memories of a difficult mother with the current, vulnerable one- «Bad memories are cadavers that refuse burial.» As both subject and narrator, LoSchiavo illuminates the delicate balance between personal autonomy and familial duty.

― Karen Cline-Tardiff, poet and Editor-in-Chief of Gnashing Teeth Publishing

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Real and harried, purposeful and comprehensive, when understanding is sought and reason is not always kind, «Cancer Courts My Mother» provides readers with great measures of meaning. ― Matt Potter, Editor-in-Chief of Pure Slush Publishing (Australia) and author of «Hamburgers and Berliners»