One Breasted Woman

Unfortunately this subject is a familiar one for many Bay Area women. Susan King is family to a friend of mine. I wish her (and all those touched by breast cancer) strength and courage. Perhaps poetry can do what medicine can't. --- - _Poet Susan Deborah King will be reading from her new book, One-Breasted Woman, this Friday Jan 11 at Browser Books on Fillmore and Clay in SF._ In her third collection of poems, Susan Deborah King bears witness to a soul's transformation in the wake of a breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent mastectomy. In the crucible of disfigurement and confrontation with mortality, a transpersonal figure emerges, a One-Breasted Woman, who is possessed of a powerful and passionate vulnerability. She raises up with outrage at the possible systemic causes of her disease. She holds the earth and beloved people close as she contemplates her end. She connects with the suffering of others. These poems are vivid with fear, heightened awareness, anger, tenderness, sorrow, playfulness, and even joy. Though the subject is illness, King's imagery often springs from other sources: the mythic dimension, science, or the natural world. From *"Song Sparrow":http://www.amazon.com/One-Breasted-Woman-Susan-Deborah-King/dp/0977945820* Though his breast
has a black mark on it,
he throws his head back
and with quivering throat sends out his song
. . . "I am here!
This is who I am.
I am." The work in this collection is a testament to the possibility that songs of ecstatic, transcendent celebration can rise from the descent into a pit of life-threatening terror.