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Our Cancers: Poems
Poet and playwright Dan O’Brien chronicles the year and a half during which both he and his wife were treated for cancer.
On the fourteenth anniversary of 9/11—an event that caused their downtown apartment to become “suffused with the World Trade Center’s carcinogenic dust”—Dan O’Brien’s wife discovers a lump in her breast. Surgery and chemotherapy soon follow, and on the day of his wife’s final infusion, O’Brien learns of his own diagnosis. He has colon cancer and will need to undergo his own intensive treatment over the next nine months.
Our Cancers is a compelling account of illness and commitment, of parenthood and partnership. This spare and powerful sequence creates an intimate mythology that seeks meaning in illness while also celebrating the resilience of sufferers, caregivers, and survivors.
As O’Brien explains in an introduction, “The consecutiveness of our personal disasters, with a daughter not yet two years old at the start of it, was shattering and nearly silencing. At hospital bedsides, in hospital beds myself, and at home through the cyclical assaults of our therapies, these poems came to me in fragments, as if my unconscious were attempting to reassemble our lives, our identities and memories . . . as if I were in some sense learning how to speak again.”
On the fourteenth anniversary of 9/11—an event that caused their downtown apartment to become “suffused with the World Trade Center’s carcinogenic dust”—Dan O’Brien’s wife discovers a lump in her breast. Surgery and chemotherapy soon follow, and on the day of his wife’s final infusion, O’Brien learns of his own diagnosis. He has colon cancer and will need to undergo his own intensive treatment over the next nine months.
Our Cancers is a compelling account of illness and commitment, of parenthood and partnership. This spare and powerful sequence creates an intimate mythology that seeks meaning in illness while also celebrating the resilience of sufferers, caregivers, and survivors.
As O’Brien explains in an introduction, “The consecutiveness of our personal disasters, with a daughter not yet two years old at the start of it, was shattering and nearly silencing. At hospital bedsides, in hospital beds myself, and at home through the cyclical assaults of our therapies, these poems came to me in fragments, as if my unconscious were attempting to reassemble our lives, our identities and memories . . . as if I were in some sense learning how to speak again.”
- GenresPoetry
102 pages, Paperback
Published September 14, 2021
3 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Dan O'Brien
25 books16 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Dan O’Brien’s plays include THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN (Primary Stages, New York; Gate Theatre, London), THE HOUSE IN SCARSDALE: A MEMOIR FOR THE STAGE (The Theatre @ Boston Court), THE CHERRY SISTERS REVISITED (Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival), THE VOYAGE OF THE CARCASS (Page 73 Productions; SoHo Playhouse), THE DEAR BOY (Second Stage Theatre), and many others. His playwriting awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, the PEN Center USA Award for Drama, and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. O’Brien was twice the Tennessee Williams Fellow in Playwriting at Sewanee, the Hodder Fellow playwright-in-residence at Princeton University, and the inaugural Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. O’Brien is also a librettist and an award-winning poet whose collections, WAR REPORTER, SCARSDALE, and NEW LIFE, are published in the U.S. and the U.K.
Dan O’Brien’s plays include THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN (Primary Stages, New York; Gate Theatre, London), THE HOUSE IN SCARSDALE: A MEMOIR FOR THE STAGE (The Theatre @ Boston Court), THE CHERRY SISTERS REVISITED (Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival), THE VOYAGE OF THE CARCASS (Page 73 Productions; SoHo Playhouse), THE DEAR BOY (Second Stage Theatre), and many others. His playwriting awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, the PEN Center USA Award for Drama, and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. O’Brien was twice the Tennessee Williams Fellow in Playwriting at Sewanee, the Hodder Fellow playwright-in-residence at Princeton University, and the inaugural Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. O’Brien is also a librettist and an award-winning poet whose collections, WAR REPORTER, SCARSDALE, and NEW LIFE, are published in the U.S. and the U.K.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 27, 2023
gorgeous, heartbreaking, luminous. what a talent dan o’brien is.
Read
July 22, 2025I was introduced to O'Brien's poetry by his wife, Jessica St. Clair. Her story of breast cancer is such a comfort to me. When I heard that they had simultaneous cancer journeys, I was horrified and wanted to read O'Brien's poetic portrayal of it. Staring down death, side by side, with a small child nearby is such a feat.
This was my first time reading O'Brien's poetry, so I am acclimating to his style. Some poems hit me right in the gut. One brought me to tears. Others, I didn't connect with. A mixed bag for me, but I'm also very happy that I read this collection.
Favorites:
32 - [locating the blame for the diagnosis]
Is it under
the strata of
heredity
Or could it be
chillhood's
cankered harvests
The mother
whose hairless head
I kissed in bed
The towers'
pulverized
miasma
The verrin
you dawdled
to decimate
Your ambition
my ambition
denaturing
The pleasurable
arguments dissecting
our resentments
The mother
who succumbed
the weekend we wed
This woman
that woman whose
deaths I versed
Did I lure
the torturer nearer
I am sorry more
sorry than you
can bear
to hear
4I
When
you wake
from sleep
you wake
from death
you know
53
The oncologist
lathers his hands
Nine months
he estimates until
we deliver your
death or life
55
Which was worse
lying in bed
afraid
I would open
my eyes to
my family
or to the
empty
room
65
The old poet
told the young poet
You must live
through hell
once or twice
more
The young poet
smiled to be
polite
66
...
I
who have never
even broken
a bone yet
here I am
made one of them
sudden denizen
of this the
simultaneous city
where the unwell
crowd the under-
ground...
83 [Tears! Relatable to me as a person who underwent treatment with a young child. This was absolutely heartbreaking to see it put into words.]
97 [yes, yes, yes.]
This was my first time reading O'Brien's poetry, so I am acclimating to his style. Some poems hit me right in the gut. One brought me to tears. Others, I didn't connect with. A mixed bag for me, but I'm also very happy that I read this collection.
Favorites:
32 - [locating the blame for the diagnosis]
Is it under
the strata of
heredity
Or could it be
chillhood's
cankered harvests
The mother
whose hairless head
I kissed in bed
The towers'
pulverized
miasma
The verrin
you dawdled
to decimate
Your ambition
my ambition
denaturing
The pleasurable
arguments dissecting
our resentments
The mother
who succumbed
the weekend we wed
This woman
that woman whose
deaths I versed
Did I lure
the torturer nearer
I am sorry more
sorry than you
can bear
to hear
4I
When
you wake
from sleep
you wake
from death
you know
53
The oncologist
lathers his hands
Nine months
he estimates until
we deliver your
death or life
55
Which was worse
lying in bed
afraid
I would open
my eyes to
my family
or to the
empty
room
65
The old poet
told the young poet
You must live
through hell
once or twice
more
The young poet
smiled to be
polite
66
...
I
who have never
even broken
a bone yet
here I am
made one of them
sudden denizen
of this the
simultaneous city
where the unwell
crowd the under-
ground...
83 [Tears! Relatable to me as a person who underwent treatment with a young child. This was absolutely heartbreaking to see it put into words.]
97 [yes, yes, yes.]
October 26, 2021
This collection is achingly beautiful. The poetry challenged my thoughts on health, strength, love, will of a couple and a family. Earnest and personable. So raw and moving.
October 9, 2022
Harrowing and beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews