Angel Bones

by Ilyse Kusnetz

Angel Bones has an introspective voice that maintains a bright understanding of the temporal. As we read, we are painfully aware the speaker is dying from cancer and death is imminent. The attempt to not only explain, but understand how to welcome and embrace death is a bittersweet calm. How can one leave willingly when there is so much left behind?

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2019

Reviews

[Lisa Stice · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are like love letters to memories, Ilyse's husband (Brian Turner), science, nature and all the animals who inhabit it, and the future. I cried when reading many of these poems because I could feel Ilyse's sadness coming through her words. I appreciated the lighter, uplifting (looking into an infinite future) because I think my heart would have broken had there only been sadness.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a haunting book--interweaving the scientific and mythic, the humorous and the literally deathly serious. Kusnetz's themes about making and unmaking of life, struggling with chemotherapy and social reality. The mixture of tones and observations can be jarring but it is a powerful testament to her experience and awareness of her own morality. This can be seen most clearly in the longest prose poem, "The Explosion Museum," where, in the end, "And this is the one you never see coming. Everything entangled. The atom split, the universe born." Ranging in styles from conventional to the experimental, Kusnetz's last book is a powerful one.

[David Grosskopf · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was the first section of poetry that moved me especially, when her anger and grief towards her cancer diagnosis was most sharp, and her appreciation for the world around her equally so. An epigram preceding her poems states, “To become more than just suffering, something transformative, it needs to be shared. This is why we have ritual. And poetry is a kind of ritual.” I was hooked from there, as Kusnetz moves from the sublime to corrupt in her own body.

Here is a poem called “Orange Tree,” which shows how little the poet cared for subtleties when death and beauty loomed so large:

The Orange Tree.

We ate its sweet oranges every day after radiation,
but a late frost in February
blackened the fruit and burned its leaves.
We'll hope for the best, we said
and put it to the back of our minds.

My hair fell out, I learned to walk again.
Before we knew, it was summer—
rain galloping down windows.
Gathering fallen boughs in the yard,
you saw it, and called me to see—

the orange tree's new leaves
pennanting the branches,
bulbs of white blossoms a promise
of more fruit in time.
Then a dragonfly flitted onto a low limb

and perched. It let us close enough
to touch, strangers craning down
into its still, resolute beauty.

[Camille Dungy]

In these electric meditations on living while dying, Ilyse Kusnetz reminds us of what it means to dearly love an impermanent world. Kusnetz was in treatment for cancer at the time she wrote Angel Bones. Sometimes, as in “Scientists Prove Chemo Brain is Real” and “Chemotherapy,” she writes directly about those treatments. In other poems (“A Notion of Time According to Physicists (After I Die)” and “I’ll Be Your Sweet Poltergeist”), she speaks frankly about her hopes for “When I don’t have a body anymore. When/ I’m ash and fragmented bone.” As much as this book is centered on the poet’s personal and ultimate loss, it is deeply grounded in the world around her. The universe around her, really, as there as many poems in Angel Bones about the magnificent continuity of stars and space and time as there are poems that center on blue herons, dragonflies, butterflies, bees, sanderlings, parakeets, and “the wild delight of wild things, my Love.”

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/12/fif...

[Reneesarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because I preordered this book Ilyse's husband, Brian Turner, sent me some gifts. These gifts included a poem of hers prepared for framing, some photographs of them together, a bookmark, a letter. These gifts were incredibly sweet and I was deeply moved, truly, despite how cliche that sounds, for the profound love Brian had/has for Ilyse.

I am no professional judge of poetry. I am just an ordinary reader and poems resonate with me or do not, find a place in my heart insisting on their truth or pass by like an afternoon breeze, leaving me on their way to others places.

I say these things because I loved some of these poems and then there were a few I could not relate to at all. I felt that "A.I. Existential" was the weakest poem in the book, imaginng that we are a river of computer code perhaps hijacking the brains of the currently living. I get the concept. It just seemed gimmicky rather than heart centered.

All through the book I could feel her sadness at her coming death and how much she did not want to leave Brian. I felt that sadness and loss profoundly as it followed me from poem to poem.

I have not read any of Ilyse's poetry before. She was gifted in the use of language.She also sees as a painter sees, and was clearly in love with light, form and color. I am glad I read this book. Ilyse's poems will live in the hearts and minds of her readers. A blessing for her And for her readers.

[Ann Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are life-affirming, even as the poet herself goes through the 30+ month process of dying. They are love poems and poems celebrating the physical world, poems referencing society and pop culture and things of beauty and marvelous places.

This book makes a good accompaniment to Kalanithi's heart-breaking memoir, When Breath Becomes Air. Both books deal with why to stay in the world, and how to leave it.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angel Bones is an excellent read, introspective, loving, thoughtful roamings on the cusp of death.

The intimacy and devotion to imagination for futures and potential intersections were both incredible and melancholic.

"Catching this Life, and others," "Finches," and "Harbinger," were among my favorites and will certainly be read again and again.

[Lisa Macon · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a huge fan of Small Hours, I was thrilled to see Angel Bones on the shelf at my local Barnes and Noble. I cried through it, knowing that she knew she was dying when she wrote these poems, and still was able to create amazing works that will be immortal.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy Shit! This may be the best book of poetry I've ever read. It's magnificent! Filled with science and spirituality and love, and astonishing imagery and poetry. I don't think more needs to be said. Read this poet!

[Dana DesJardins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and beautiful. Christian Wiman writes, "We are who we are only in our last bastions," and here Kusnetz shows her big hearted, inclusive hope for a world that somehow can no longer allow her to live.

[Michelle Smart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a hard time with these poems. They didn't speak to me.

[silas denver melvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

another high 3

[Karen Sofarin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful reminder that love is really all we have to give. Even in dying some people are so generous with words and with love. I would like to read her earlier poems.