Body of Diminishing Motion: Poems and a Memoir [Paperback]

Joan Sidney (Author), Bruce R. Ransom (Contributor), Robert Cording (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2005 | ISBN-10: 0972304525 | ISBN-13: 978-0972304528

This collection of poems and memoir is the second title from Laurel Books, CavanKerry's Literature of Illness imprint which features poetry and prose that explores the many poignant issues associated with confronting serious physical and/or psychological illness. Sidney speaks to the author's experiences living with multiple sclerosis for four decades, as well as her personal legacy as the daughter of a strong-willed Holocaust survivor. Body of Diminishing Motion will speak to anyone who has been touched by illness and refused to succumb to its power.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"She does literature's old work: to introduce us, intimately and warmly, to how it feels to live in a particular skin, in a specific set of circumstances. Her poems and prose both struggle against that skin and situation and seek ways to celebrate them. 'What would it be like,' she asks, 'to love the life we live?'" (Mark Doty )

About the Author

Joan Seliger Sidney is writer-in-residence at the University of Connecticut's Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, and Lecturer in the Department of English. She also facilitates "Writing for Your Life," an adult writing workshop. Her dream-come-true job was teaching creative writing at the Universite de Grenoble, France.

Product Details

• Paperback: 123 pages
• Publisher: Cavankerry (April 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972304525
• ISBN-13: 978-0972304528
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,975,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of Body of Diminishing Motion, June 20, 2009

By 

Margaret Sonser Breen (New London, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Body of Diminishing Motion: Poems and a Memoir (Paperback)

Through a series of poems and a substantial essay, Body of Diminishing Motion explores the possibilities of movement--physical and metamorphical; generational and geographical; familial, spiritual, and poetical--through the prism of living with multiple sclerosis. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Joan Seliger Sydney interweaves descriptions of her struggles with m.s. with accounts of her parents' experiences of loss. Charlotte Delbo's term "deep memory" applies powerfully to both.
For the beauty of its language and its embrace of the creative spirit, this is a book to be read and treasured.

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry a cut above, September 30, 2006

By 

Pamela S. Wagner "Pamela S Wagner" (Rocky Hill, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body of Diminishing Motion: Poems and a Memoir (Paperback)

Joan Seliger Sidney's marvelous book, Body of Diminishing Motion, has turned illness, specifically multiple sclerosis, into a proper subject for poetry...With her spare, precise, yet lovely lines, pared to the essential, Sidney's poems are elegance fulfilled in simplicity. It's all here: secrecy and loss both historical and personal; the Holocaust; friendship in the midst of struggle; kindnesses, big and small and the difference they make; the importance of and the ambivalence towards family and family history, wanting to forget, to live `a normal life' and wanting to keep that history alive...This is a book that most definitely was needed in the world and Sidney has done an admirable job in giving it to us.