Fall Risk

by Cameron Morse

Cameron Morse confronts hard truths and transforms them. These poems offer readers faith in life and in art—a medical diagnosis and the clinical procedures that it involves can be shoved aside. We have here a poet whose craft and strength of will proceed toward beauty, family, and birth. We are not alone, these poems show us, gathering the spirits of Diana herself, St. Francis, Shelly, and, to my mind, the most uplifting evidence of poets such as William Stafford, Donald Justice, and all predecessor poets who, like Cameron Morse, continue to show us how to live. —Robert Stewart, The Narrow Writing, Art & Values.

Genres: Poetry

56 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2018

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book of poems. It won the 2018 Best Book Award from Glass Lyre Press, not a surprise to anyone who has heard or read Morse’s work. How many young men, on being diagnosed with a glioblastoma in the brain, expected to kill them in about a year, would enroll in an MFA program in poetry? He is determined to live at an accelerated pace. For those who may be reluctant to read a cancer book, I’ll make the reading easier by telling you that he has survived three years already, just celebrated the birth of a baby boy, and will finish his MFA this semester. He is also the only two-time winner of the Crystal Field Scholarship for Writing at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, a scholarship awarded by local poets.

People have pointedly asked Morse to stop writing about his tumor, because it depresses them. Never mind that he gives us a rare, insider’s look at the treatments and at how one can go from
hopelessness to living with purpose and humor again. Like all good poets, he knows it’s more effective to describe what he’s going through honestly and poetically after taking a step back from the emotion. The reader fills in the rest. His cancer poems are wonderfully juxtaposed with tender news: ultrasounds and talks to his unborn baby.

He begins “Little Star: Week 8,”

“Embryo son, fetus daughter, wherever
you are in your path of orbit, hear
me: I am dying. My brain tumor

is bigger than you are…

…if I’m not standing there in my sky
blue gown as you fall headfirst

into the light of this world, then
I passed you on my way out,
grazing your cheek with my blazing trail.”

Seventeen pages later, we’re relieved to read “Love Song for My Radiologist” with a report of no evidence of disease progression after a recent visit. Both light whimsy and dark humor sprinkled through the poems help Morse and his readers cope and put things in perspective. His first poem lets us know the book won’t be an exercise in self-pity, as he reports a visit to the phlebotomist:

“Don’t look she says,
as the butterfly needle slips

into the crook of my arm,
but I can’t help watching

her silver proboscis
pierce the bruise

of weekly blood draws,…

What she means is, if you flinch,
I might miss. I might slip.

I might kiss you, by accident.”

In “Poe Poem,” he goes to the darker side of humor:

“For the first time in my life, I insisted on carving
jack-o’-lanterns, clawing out
the cold slime of their brains with my fingernails.”

Morse proves again that laughter is the best medicine, but pursuing your passion must be a close second.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because of the way this book juxtaposes the poet's battle with cancer as a young man with the growth of his child in the womb, it will appeal to those who have a strong sense of the interplay between life and death. I'm not one of those people, to be honest, but I still appreciated this book and the experience we go on with the poet through his life prescribed by his disease and his encounters with the medical industry.

Despite the deeply personal subject matter, Morse manages to remain circumspect while being honest and he manages to avoid being maudlin. I think that's quite an accomplishment in a situation that could easily lead one into self-pity or the need to process the situation in an emotional way that would be hard for readers to stick with. I admit that I had to put this book aside once because it was reminding me too much of my own health challenges (not as acute as Morse's) and so I found it a bit depressing, which was all my own projecting because the poet remains quite steady in the face of a debilitating situation just as he's starting a family.

Alarie originally reviewed this book in this group here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I definitely recommend visiting that review to help you decide whether this book is for you.

Morse's style is spare and the poems sometimes simply present the predicaments of his life, but he is definitely a poet with a sense of telling details and capable of lyrical flight.

Dusting

I turn lamb's wool around the storm door
cobwebbed during my absense,

seeing what the world will look like
without me, what spiders

will take hold without my hand
on the knob, tiny weavers whispering

at the loom of moonlight.
During my absence, Virginia creeper

drapes its jacket of serrated
blades over my garden's irises

and zinnias, soaking up the sun
in their stead, smothering my flowers

in their own bed. It lies like a sleeping
parent over the baby's breath.

[Maryfrances · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ditto Alarie Tennille's review entirely.