| Abstract: | Through a study of the poems Claire Philip wrote while dying of cancer, the author develops the hypothesis that in writing poems, a patient reveals thoughts and feelings that might not be evident in a clinical situation. The thoughts and feelings disclosed in Philip's poems are less about pain and more about grief over separation from loved ones, dread of loss of identity, and doubts about death's meaning. In these disclosures and in the selection of images and stanza forms used to convey the disclosures, Philip is in the tradition of ars moriendi poets, more concerned about how to live and write about living while dying than in what happens to the body in the last moments. |
