What Is Endured

Dr. Sharon Foley's poems illuminate the complexity of emotions surrounding illness, death and loss. Her experience as a physician gives her a unique perspective from which to shine that light, allowing insight into life's most personal and powerful moments, she witnesses cancer's slow ravage, "each day your stomach collapsed/further into itself/ and you went with it/folding into the seam of your bed"; pronounces a patient's death, "I felt something I never had before/it was like the rumbling of an approaching train/rushing faster, whistling louder"; describes cardiac surgery; "I saw inside/the house of your ribs." Sharon Foley's award winning poems invites us to experience her unforgettable encounters with illness and mortality; universal hardships that touch all of us.