Beautiful Book You Must Read: Holding Silvan, A Brief Life

Beautiful Book You Must Read: Holding Silvan, A Brief Life

by | Mar 21, 2016 | Anxiety & Mental Health, Great Reads, Motherhood, Writing

It’s been a while since I’ve plugged a book on here, not because I haven’t been reading (I’m always reading!). I loved Karl Ove Knausg?rd’s My Struggle Books One and Two, for example, loved them because they took me so fully back to my time in Norway and because?Knausg?rd manages to elevate the?domestic to the sublime, to make regular old life seem like something very powerful and profound indeed. And I’ve been slowly but gratefully working my way through Bonnie Jo Campbell’s book of short stories Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. Currently, I’m turning most of my attention to my book club book for next month, a non-fiction number called Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, which, if not entirely my cup of tea, is a good story nonetheless.

But last week I halted everything to?devour a memoir called Holding Silvan: A Brief Life by my new friend Monica Wesolowska.?

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In Holding Silvan, Wesolowska describes how, after a seemingly normal pregnancy, labor, and delivery, her newborn baby is?determined to have massive brain damage?so massive that doctors predict it is only his brain stem that will ever fire. What happens next is the process of letting this baby, who will have no life to speak of beyond the one he could be afforded on machines, die.

It’s been a while since a book has affected me as physically or as intensely as Holding Silvan did. As I emailed to Monica the next day:

“During the part when Silvan is actively dying?if that’s not an oxymoron?I felt this almost physical energy tugging at my body, at my uterus and breasts and forehead, almost pulling me forward and out of my chair. Every fiber of me that’s a mother felt his dying, and I just read and read and sobbed and sobbed until L came in to see why I was crying and I just wanted to grab onto him and?hold.?This may sound overwrought, since our losses are so tiny in comparison to yours, but while I was reading and crying I also felt like I was healing some of the difficulties of our past five years, trying to have another baby, losing a seven-week fetus when we found out it was ectopic (and I nearly bled to death), all the near misses and dashed hopes…”

I did?I sat in my living room and sobbed for what felt like hours. And while that may not seem like the most ringing endorsement?I know some of you want reads that are “uplifting,” I have to say that my gratitude for this book, for its beautiful, careful prose, its pacing, and the lessons in it about letting go, death, and motherhood, were so profound to me that I think in a way it IS an uplifting book.

I hope you read it, and I hope when you do that you buy it from your local bookstore (ahem) or, if you must, from Powells or Amazon. And pass it on. And buy a copy for someone else you know. Monica’s book was put out by an independent?press, the terrific Hawthorne Books in Portland, Oregon,?and with independent press books it’s always a big help to spread the word, grassroots style.

Happy, poignant reading,

Susie

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If you’re looking for more great memoirs, check this?and this out.

 

 

Charles Wright poem on Poetry Daily today

by | Apr 1, 2014 | Great Reads

I love the work of poet Charles Wright, and I loved the two poems from his book Caribou, reprinted on Poetry Daily today.

Enjoy!

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My Old Clinch Mountain Home

I keep on hoping a theme will bite me,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ? and leave its two wounds
In my upper arm and in my heart.
A story line of great destiny,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? or fate at least.
It’s got to be serious, as my poor flesh is serious.
So, dog, show me your teeth and bite me.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ?Show me some love.

Such little consequence, our desires.
Better to be the last chronicler of twilight, and its aftermath.
Better to let your hair swing loose, and dust up the earth.
I’d like to be a prophet,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? with animals at my heels.
I’d like to have a staff, and issue out water wherever it fell.

Lord, how time does alter us,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ?it goes without saying.
There is an afterlight that follows us,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ?? ?and fades as clockticks fade.
Eventually we stand on it puddled under our shoes.
The darkness that huddles there
Is like the dew that settles upon the flowers,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?invisible, cold, and everywhere.

When the wind comes, and the snow repeats us,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ? ?how like our warped lives it is,
Melting objects, disappearing sounds
Like lichen on gnarled rocks.
For we have lived in the wind, and loosened ourselves like ice melt.
Nothing can hold us, I’ve come to know.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? Nothing, I say.

–Charles Wright, from Caribou, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

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Charles McLeod on The Quivering Pen

by | Sep 11, 2013 | Great Reads, Writing

I wanted to share this lovely essay by my friend Charles McLeod, whom I’ve blogged about before.

PensOver on The Quivering Pen, Charlie writes about publishing his first story at the same time his dad unexpectedly dies of sepsis.

Here?s a teaser:

The copy of The Iowa Review that contained my story was among the titles. ?It was the first time I?d seen the issue. ?It was late at night, deep winter, and no one else was around, and if I?d felt my dad?s presence every second since his death, that presence was all the more pronounced as I stood there in the half-dark, staring at the magazine?s title.

The Quivering Pen does a semi-regular feature called “My First Time”; QP says: “writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.”

Good stuff, methinks. I might just submit something.

I hope you enjoy the essay.

Susie