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When one person gets cancer, the whole family gets cancer. It's a long, painful ordeal with different endings for the stricken families, but certain cancers demand it, and endings they'll get.

I just read Without straight through and think Donald Hall's poetic response to poet-wife Jane Kenyon's decline under the killing effects of leukemia is one of the preeminent literary responses to cancer.

Whether you want to read a book of during and after poems about terminal cancer is another matter. Especially during the holidays, which can be peculiarly depressing on their own for some reason. Especially during the pandemic, which is uniquely depressing for families changing traditions in the names of science and safety.

On the other hand, whether you've been through the loss of family or friend due to cancer or not, this book can provide its own strange succor. You read it and feel you're not alone. You read it and realize that the poet speaks for you, in his way. You understand why so many poems are titled as "Letter to..." and are written to Kenyon after her death.

For Hall, writing these poems must have been a life saver. It's not the muse most of us would want to call on, but for writers left behind, the call is assuredly there, and writing is a key part of the long recovery process. In the end, we rest assured that "recovery," as much as can be expected, is exactly what our lost loved one would wish for us, the ones left behind.