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Turk survives in 'Getting Out Alive'
Posted 11/14/2003
MADISON, Wis.— Tisha Turk is a survivor. In “Getting Out Alive,” the 27th Parallel Press poetry chapbook release, Turk takes readers through her fight with a life-threatening illness and her subsequent recovery after surgery. She writes about survival, relationships and life’s worth as she navigates the course of her disease and healing.
Tuck
describes a year of treatments, medication, nausea and challenges as
the disease eats away at her body and soul. She dedicates her poetry
to her recovery and renewal in the second part of the chapbook. In “How
We Live Now,” Turk analyzes her life after her brain tumor and
her quest for a new beginning. “How do I live now? This month
I said: / I will live in this imperfect house, untidy/ heart and empty
head.”
Turk is a teaching assistant of English and women’s studies at UW-Madison and is a Ph.D. candidate. “Getting Out Alive” is her first poetry collection, although she also writes nonfiction and is working on a dissertation.
The Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Libraries. The press releases six poetry chapbooks each year, available
at $10 per book or $50 for a year-long subscription. For more information,
visit: http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
E-mail: parallelpress@library.wisc.edu.
Here is a selection from “Getting Out Alive,” called “Adenoma”:
In autumn they found
the tumor, blooming
like a late flower: it should
not have been there.
I wonder when it found
me, when the seed was planted,
took root. How have I tended
this unknown garden,
the ground I took for granted?
In April, edge of the frozen season,
the latest doctor’s voice tells me
there is no change.
On my kitchen table, tulips
shed their red and yellow petals,
shrinking to stamen and stem.
In the garden of my brain
I picture springtime, harvest,
fields left fallow. In May,
at the market, I buy spinach
sweetened under snow.
In my head, the flower
changes color but not
shape, no further bloom,
no sign of ceasing.
