The recent loss of my colleague and teacher-in-charge to Cancer weighs heavily on me. LindaAnn’s vivid personification of Cancer in her collection is so powerful that it keeps me flinching throughout the book, as if I am sitting beside that unmerciful Casanova and watching his cruel play.
“My mother’s lies propelled her life, steered fate towards brittle stars. Truth, like silence, lodged itself like a bone in her throat.” (“Mother Magnified”)
The central theme of LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s “Cancer Courts My Mother” is a complex mother-daughter relationship under the shadow of terminal illness, expanding to memory, care, and mortality. The poet personifies cancer as a suitor or intrusive companion, both villain and seducer. This metaphorical voice parallels the daughter’s navigation of anger, duty, and loss. LindaAnn accomplishes this by weaving myth, cinema, plants, ghosts, and Catholic imagery into the medical reality, creating a cohesive world in which symbolism and experience intertwine.
The poem “Diagnosis” introduces the shock of illness, while “Mother Magnified” reflects a childhood marked by secrets and pain. “Green Nursemaid” and “Living through the Dying” use plants to symbolise care and futility. “Flash” confronts the impact of cancer on mother-daughter dynamics. “Mother on Morphine, Dreaming of Anna Magnani” merges film imagery with hospice reality. “Early Visit from the Grim Reaper” and “My Mother’s Ghost Dancing” bring the presence of death before loss. “Cancer, You Sly Casanova” and “Bartering with Cancer” cast cancer as a seductive, inevitable force.
“He ransacked her impatient body till
She was persuaded to leave us for him,
Not realising all Casanovas
Are interested only in conquest. “
“The Closet as She Left It” is a heartbreaking post-mortem poem, where clothes and belongings echo the absence of the body, an undeniable void.
Taken together, these poems establish a chronology of dying and build a layered psychological portrait of grief, reconciliation, and memory, which deepens as the reader progresses through the collection. LoSchiavo blends formal verse (villanelle, golden shovel, Fibonacci, haibun, haiku, cento, blank verse, sonnets) with prose poems, showing both discipline and emotional rawness. ‘Bad memories are cadavers that refuse burial’, ‘My mouth making promises I can’t keep’, ‘Cancer, you sly Casanova’, ‘truth’s mouth sewn shut’, ‘sharp was the taste of her rage’, ‘nude audacity of death’ — these phrases and lines are enough to prove the audacity of poetic expression through the explosion of diverse literary themes. LindaAnn’s use of language awestruck me: ‘her name leaves gravel in my mouth’ or ‘she offered her body to the incinerator’.
I came to admire LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s emphatic poetic style first in “Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide,” a collection that addresses different aspects of suicide along with societal perceptions, personal narratives, and the aftermath of loss. The themes she examines consistently align with her dense, vivid imagery. In her work, readers will not find familiar poetic rhythms but rather a style that captures the visceral sensations of life. She can immerse her readers in the intensity of language and imagination.
“Cancer Courts My Mother” assures that poetry can confront the unspeakable realities of death and grief. Through her poetry, LoSchiavo has taken her readers inside the sickroom, into memory’s recesses, and through the haunting aftermath of loss. This collection will appeal to literary readers who admire the emotional honesty of Louise Gluck, the formal brilliance of Adrienne Rich, and the fierce intimacy of Sharon Olds. Those who have experienced caregiving or loss, seeking words for their emotions, must grab a copy of LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s “Cancer Courts My Mother.”
