Poet Richard Sommer was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. His verse journal Cancer Songs is his response to this experience. Sommer passed away on February 13 at the age of 77. He reads from Cancer Songs in his last interview with CBC documentary journalist David Gutnick, and talks about his experiences with life and death.
"In some ways I had not understood what life was about until I was threatened with the loss of it," Sommer tells Gutnick in the interview. "Life goes on whether you go on with it or not... It will be what it is, and I'm ready to go there."
You can listen to part 2 of that interview with Sommer's wife of over 40 years, dance improvisationalist, Vicki Tansey. Speaking with CBC's Jeanette Kelly after Sommer's passing, she reads his unpublished postscript to Cancer Songs: "...Be gentle with one another. Be curious and learn everything you can in the time you are given. Reject no knowledge and the world will not reject you. It will take you in as it now takes me in."
Lisa Fetterman of the Globe and Mail has also written a thoughtful portrait: "Richard Sommer found inspiration in everything - even his illness."
Richard Sommer’s books include Homage to Mr. Macmullin, Blue Sky Notebook, left hand mind, Milarepa, The Other Side of Games, Selected and New Poems, Fawn Bones and The Shadow Sonnets. Originally from Minneapolis, Sommer earned a PhD from Harvard University in English Literature, and taught poetry at Concordia University in Montreal for many years. He was an environmental activist and warden, photographer, flutist, tai chi teacher and mentor to many.
"Dreaming" (Opening Poem of Cancer Songs by Richard Sommer)
Same time, same place, same frame
of same screened window
looking out on garden against rock wall
rose-pink blooms on long stalks
nameless to me,
nameless arching ferns,
a patch of spread palmate leaves
blazing & yellowing into autumn,
nameless to me, nameless.
Where have I been,
what have I been thinking
while all this has been going on?
Have I wasted my life?
Topics: People
