Customer Reviews

March, Before Spring

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March, before Spring puts into words what I feel. It has the honesty of emotions that make up grief and shock of loss. I couldn't put the book down. Than I read it again. I found the poetry to be both comforting and healing.

Ms. Mendel's poems are stunning.She balances love and grief on the small details of ordinary life: an old shirt, the crumbs left on the counter, the dent left in a pillow. They speak softly but can tear your heart as the poems recall her husband, their love, his death from cancer and her struggle through grief. My first reading left me in tears; each subsequent reading shows me more of Ms. Mendel's power to give voice to near-overwhelming grief and what it takes to overcome such a loss. I am a physician and I prescribe copies to patients coping with the loss of a beloved. The local Hospice organization keeps copies in their library. The poems carry great healing power as well as beauty.

A second printing for a poetry book is always something to celebrate, and especially this book. March, Before Spring has touched many people since it was first published. The letters sharing the common feelings that people experience upon discovering terminal disease and the death of a loved one, have encouraged the author to make the book available to hospice groups working with individuals to help them through their grieving. When Stephanie Mendel reads from this book, people listen. Anyone who has cared for a loved one in their dying or who has known someone who has, will want to have quiet moments with March, Before Spring. They will hear their hearts speaking deeply.

March Before Spring chronicles the illness, death from cancer, process of mourning and healing of a husband in a long and successful marriage from the point of view of the widow. The poetry, in the tradition of the very best of "confessional" poetry in contemporary American letters, is spare, elegant, lyrical and deeply felt. Ms. Mendel is a master at the use of the vivid image and ordinary experiences of life to convey the varied experiences of the entire process of caring for and about a dying person, and putting life back together again after his death. The lover of poetry will enjoy this book for the sheer artistry of the craft. The person seeking a book of poems to give voice to the universal experiences of mourning she so vividly portrays will find comfort and solace in its pages. As a psychotherapist, I have recommended this book on many occassions to people who are grieving, and all have been moved and grateful for chance to read it. In every sense, this is a book to own and to treasure.

The title "March, before Spring" and the title poem itself (placed nearly at the midpoint) echo softly in my mind and heart as I read--and read again and again--the poems in this book: delicate and powerful, moving from a husband's relentless illness to the experience of death and beyond, all in deceptively simple, straightforward language that magically evokes the ineffable quality of love.