A Man Distraught by Love

In A Man Distraught by Love, an artist is dying "one joy at a time," and her husband, a poet, finds that he has become her caregiver. This book recounts in 14-line unrhymed sonnets-often like snapshots from their daily lives-the ins and outs of their struggle: hers to keep working and to live her remaining years as fully as possible, and his discovery, despite his age, of so much he never learned before. "A disorganized class with no lesson plan," he reflects, "everything important in the final minutes." By not writing about himself directly, but as a character in a story, Alan Feldman, an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in The Atlantic and The New Yorker, is able to look at himself as a struggling, flawed protagonist caught up in a story he never wanted to be living, rather than as a lyric poet pleading for our sympathy. He and his wife discover new sorts of pleasures: they love to ride their tricycles together; or they enjoy having dinner together, once while studying an ant haul of grain of sugar across the table. Yet they also suffer in a way they never have, including from the way a diagnosis has divided their fate. "That's it: an unacceptable, ongoing disaster," writes Linda Bamber in her introduction. "Yet with its endless surprises, contradictions and new perspectives, [these poems offer] a sense of freedom and possibility alongside their grief . . . . The co-existence of the hopeless, demanding situation with the undiminished play of mind and heart-not to mention craft and creativity-stirs our profound compassion, for sure, but also makes us want to cheer." Their story covers two winters in Florida, as well as life back home in Massachusetts, in and out of hospital and rehab, and even a cruise to Alaska with family, but it stops short of a phase the author says he finds "too hard to write about." He prefers, instead, to conclude with his wife still painting, though in a new style she never asked for, and riding her recumbent tricycle too, the closest she can come to continuing to choose her own path, with the poet following, grieving, but thankful she's still with him.