There are many personal stories of cancer. Many self-help stories and many memoirs. And yes, there are even cancer poems.But now we have a book that is both a cancer story and a work of literature that happens to be a memoir by a poet. We would not wish cancer on anyone, not even—as we say—our worst enemy, but now some gratitude because cancer has given us a gift in the new book:
“One Hundred Autobiographies” by poet and scholar, David Lehman.
It is true that for a writer everything is material, and that for a writer everything is examined through the lens of language, so of course from his first suspicions Lehman began to craft a story—the real and awful story –of his bladder cancer.