Edited by liz gonzález
Don’t Turn
Away:
Poems About Breast Cancer
by Patricia Wellingham-Jones
PWJ
Publishing, 2000
Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Ph.D., RN, is a
former psychology researcher, writer, editor and lecturer, now writing
primarily poetry and short stories from her creek-side home in northern
California. She has been widely published in anthologies, journals and
online. A Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Reuben Rose
International Poetry Prize, 2003, she has ten other collections of poetry
in print.
Reviewed by Sylvia Rosen
Currently in its third printing, Don't Turn Away:
Poems About Breast Cancer has been honored by the literary community
and medical profession, earning a Pushcart Prize nomination as it makes
its way around the world.
In the 23 pages of Don't Turn Away,
Wellingham-Jones takes the reader with her on her unexpected, personal
journey. Starting with the discovery of the lump in her breast when she
"wanted to bite off / those traitor fingers, / spit them out," through the
biopsy, surgery and recovery, these poems are refreshingly honest in their
imagery and scope, touching and well crafted, without any dollops of
self-pity. Many nurses in different parts of the world keep a few extra
copies of Don't Turn Away around to hand out to patients
diagnosed with breast cancer because it communicates on so many
levels.
Wellingham-Jones poignantly contrasts her childhood body
image to that of her present, changing adult body in "Put a Sock in It."
She recalls a childhood memory of being told "Put a sock in it" when she
chattered away, annoying her family. Then, borrowing her mother's bra in
much the same way that young girls try on make-up, imagining being
grown-up, she "Stuffed socks smelling of yesterday's sweat into B-cups,"
borrowed her big sister's best sweater and "sashayed forth" to enjoy an
"outraged shriek, mother's gasp" and "Tried to figure out father's
twinkle." Two weeks after her incision healed, Wellingham-Jones revisits
that memory and continues to explore her relationship with her breasts as
she "stuffed an old bra with quilt batting. / Spent the morning tugging
and patting, / checked each mirror I passed." Later she gets her first new
bra fitted, emerging "weighted and balanced," adjusting her changing
self-image to the perky one "bouncing from shop windows," wishing she had
her sister's best sweater again.
In the title poem of the book, "Don't Turn Away,"
Wellingham-Jones shares an intimate moment, courageously placing the words
on the page the way her thoughts must have hung in the air as she prepared
to expose her scarred body to a new lover.
Now you want to undress me.
I don't know if I can bear
it.
Sometime back, I told you
about the phony lump in my
bra...
...when you step back and run your eyes
over my one nipple, across
the dented
healing slash, up to my face,
will I see on your
skin
the ripple of revulsion, a strained smile,
the cooling of
heat?
Throughout Don't Turn Away we find the poet
holding on to her love of nature as if it were her talisman against "these
mornings of dark questions" when she "looked Death in the eye." Drawing on
nature to comfort her is first evident in her poem about the biopsy, "The
Body Knows":
I lie on the gurney, wrapped in blankets
warmed and snuggly, lift
my mind
out of the hospital, try to wheel
with hawks in the
sky.
In other poems she collects and savors images of "this
quiet room threaded with purr of cat / the clear cool riffle of a creek
purling among rocks" or picking apricots "giddy with spring, gulping fresh
soft air" to keep her from focusing on the pain. The reader sits with
Wellingham-Jones in a rocking chair under an elderly sycamore tree as her
pace is slowed in the recovery process and "The spool of time unwinds /
its long trail of sunsets. / Grass grows perceptibly from morning to /
night."
At some point one can only hope that a major publisher
will come along and reprint some of Patricia Wellingham-Jones' chapbooks
in one volume, as happened for Diane Wakoski in her book,
Trilogy. However, the short length of Don't Turn Away
belies its importance. It has a lasting impact on those who read it.
Sylvia
Rosen is a veteran L.A. poet currently based in northern
California. Her first book, Dreaming the Poem, a Dream Journal,
was published by Red Wind Books. A poetry chapbook is forthcoming in
October 2004, and a volume of prose poems is due in 2005.
Poet, please send me a proposal of your
review of a poetry book or chapbook at: liz@poetix.net. Write "Proposal for
In Review" in the subject line so I don't think it's spam. -
liz | 
