Blue Peninsula: Essential Words for a Life of Loss and Change

by Madge McKeithen

"My son's illness is eight years old and has no name. It started when he was fourteen. He is now twenty-two. It is taking away his ability to walk and to reason. It is getting worse, some years more rapidly than others."


These words begin the first section of Blue Peninsula , a narrative of a son's degenerative illness in thirty-three parts focused around poems that have provided companionship and sustenance to the author. When multiple diagnostic avenues delivered no explanation for the worsening disabilities of her older son, Ike, Madge McKeithen "became a poetry addict--collecting, consuming, ripping poems out of magazines, buying slender volumes that would fit in my pocket or pocketbook, stashing them in loose-leaf notebooks, on shelves, stacking them on the floor. In the midst of all this grief, I had fallen in love. With words. Poems, especially. And just in time."


McKeithen draws on a wonderfully wide ranging group of of poets and lyricists--including Emily Dickinson, the Rolling Stones, Paul Celan, Bruce Springsteen, Marie Howe, Walt Whitman, and many others--to illuminate, comfort, and help to express her sorrow. Some chapters are reflections on friendships and family relationships in the context of a chronic and worsening illness. Some consider making peace with what life has dealt, and others value intentionally reworking it.


Not written to suggest easy solace, this powerful work aims to keep company, as would any individual whose loved one is on a course in which the only way out is through.

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2006

Reviews

[Rowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very interested in this book because I'm from South Carolina, not far from where McKeithen grew up in North Carolina. Also, she's an alumna of Queens University of Charlotte, and I'm a current student. She studied fiction, as do I, but this book is nonfiction, about her son Ike Levy who suffers with a progressive, degenerative illness that affects his brain and nervous system. McKeithen read a lot of poetry to help with self-care, being Ike's caretaker, and she wove the words of the poetry into her essays about him. All of the essays are well-written, and you get a feel of the different places she's lived at different points in Ike's life. A quick google search reveals that her son is still alive, so I don't know if this illness is terminal. To be fair, the doctors don't know either. There remains no diagnosis at the publication of this book, and I haven't found information to update what's in the book on the author's blog. This book is 210 pages long, and it's nice to come back to on and off throughout your life. A quick ten-minutes here and ten minutes there, and you'll finish it in no time. It's easy to carry around, and it isn't too sad of a read. McKeithen is a runner, and the couple of times she mentions it, makes me realize I need to hit the road a little more. She also mentions her writing routine, in the midst of taking care of Ike, and you get the sense that it's just like what Stephen King says in his memoir: Art supports life, not the other way around.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this several years ago and recently chose it for one of my book groups. I appreciated the power of words to lift the author out of her grief and to help her face her challenges. As he chronicled her son's inexplicable illness, she shares poems that resonated with her the time. Of course not all moved me, but many did. And I found poems new to me that I really liked. However, some in my book group are not that interested in poetry, and for some the description of her son's decline and her own sorrow dragged on too long. The women who felt this way are not strangers to the grief of the loss of a child, so that was interesting. Others appreciated that this was the author's way of processing the loss of the person she expected her son to be.

[Christie Grotheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book about illness and loss, helplessness and waiting... and continuing on in spite of it all. The writing is elevated but concise, and its observations are rich. I loved the format and concept: shortish essays broken up and around poetry, infused with quiet day-to-day moments. I read a few essays each morning: it was digestible for me in chunks, and I took my time with, lingering on the language. The poetry was powerful and well-curated; I appreciated the authors interpretations—and it resonated with me on a personal level as well.

[Nat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting book! McKeithen has me thinking about poetry in a new way - as a type of therapy. She does an excellent job of relating the lines of poetry to her life experiences. Highly recommend.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I have little in common with McKeithen – I can appreciate the feeling of finding solace in literature. This was the core reason why I chose to read her book.

She used a wonderful structure to tell her story, looping back and forward in time, to fill in gaps, flesh out her family and show us the ways they clung together just as they fell apart. Alongside sharing an overflowing buffet of poetry.

She proved that what we were taught at school about poetry was wrong – there is not one single correct meaning for a poem. It can be whatever we needed to be at any given time.

[Melissa Lee-Tammeus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like entering a poetry appreciation class and not really wanting to leave. A memoir of a mother dealing with the chronic, deadly illness of her son finds her way through her grief by way of poetry and shares her journey with the reader. While some of the poems were over my head as well as her deconstruction of them, I truly enveloped her process. You cannot help but feel the waves of the many layers of grief this mother goes through being the caretaker of her son as he slowly loses more and more functioning throughout the years. I dog-eared many pages to remind myself to go back and look up poems and her own words. For instance, she writes, discussing her son's cognitive losses: "It was, to that point, the time of his greatest scream" (p. 74). Her grief is that powerful. I could not help but think of my own grief and losses as McKeithen spoke of hers. She wrote: "What I knew for sure was that when Ike's illness cut into our lives, piety and professed quick fixes alternately appalled me and left me cold. I could listen only to those who themselves had experienced pain. When things were at their worst, proof of genuine suffering was my prerequisite for giving attention" (p. 78). Many times, her words made me cry. For instance, this line broke my heart: "How much I need someone to know that the well is deep, that its substance is grief, that the water we drink is black, that when I am down there, I cannot breathe, and that I am screaming, screaming that I had wanted something else " (p. 85). This book is a beautiful testament to the struggle that is loss but also celebration. I highly recommend this to anyone who has suffered or appreciates the beauty of the written word.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written by the writing teacher I have right now, who I think just maybe has changed my life. It is a beautifully and originally crafted book chronicling her experience watching her son struggle with an undiagnosed degenerative disease and the role that poetry played in helping her cope. Each chapter is its own small personal essay which begins with a poem that grabbed her attention or heart in some way. She then proceeds to continue narrating the story of her own dealing with this while also identifying the phrases and words that captivated something for her.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book so far that I've read on the subject on grief and loss, probably because the author isn't an "expert", just a mother dealing with the unknown, devasting illness of her son by immersing herself in poetry. Despite that our situations are really different, I often found myself crying in recognition.

[Beverly Molnar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure this book helped me like or appreciate poetry any more than I did before (except for Billy Collins). But I could relate to much of what the author was experiencing in her life, which in itself was cathartic.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reading this on the suggestion of Shiela Bender. So far, very good. Though I only read small bits at a time.

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, broken, and lost poetry. Will make you cry for sure.