OSU poet laughs at chronic illness with wit, courage
I was fortunate recently to attend a book launch for poet Jennifer Richter’s second book, "No Acute Distress." Richter currently teaches in Oregon State University’s Master of Fine Arts program.
I wasn’t familiar with Richter’s work, but I immediately became interested in her. She began her reading from "No Acute Distress"by explaining half-jokingly, “Actually I wanted to title the book 'Pleasant, Healthy-Appearing White Female In No Acute Stress,' but the publisher wouldn’t go for it.”
I found Richter to be refreshing and brave.
In the book, Richter examines the inside-outside situation of a mother raising two small children while suffering from a chronic illness. Her poetry approaches the taboo subject of chronic illness with wit, tenacity and courage.
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Richter brings the reader up close to uncomfortable hospital scenes. In the prose poem “The Only Other Thing to Watch,” the pronoun “you” puts the reader in the position of the patient: “After trying your vein for five times, the night nurse calls in back-up. The specialist, smiling like a waitress, brings a PICC line on a silver tray … A PICC line means long-term…”
In the poem “These Days It’s Hard to Tell What’s Part of the Act,” the speaker confides conversationally, “My doctor’s packed the place for years / because he’s known for making huge things / sometimes disappear. / His routine is predictable, effortless…”
Images of IVs, patient charts, warm blankets, night nurses and anxiously awaited doctors occur throughout Richter’s poetry. The poet-patient anticipates the doctor’s arrival as if he or she were a magician, god or lover.
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Richter also uses irony to highlight problems in our health care system. The poetic sequence “Eighteen Seconds” begins with an epigraph quoted from the New York Times: “Patients, on average, have 18 seconds to talk to a doctor before they are interrupted.”
The poems take sarcastic digs at clichés: “Nobody’s fine.” They expose the endless prescriptions of pain killers: “I…don’t want time off, don’t need / more drugs...I’ve tried Depakote, Sinequan, / Zomig, Xanax…”
Richter pays homage to broken parts, to the experience of trauma and pain, and to hope of recovery. The poems uncover the layers behind doctor charts, pain scales and missing years. While raising her young children, Richter felt like she was living a double life, suffering monumental highs and lows from chronic pain. But at the same time, her children kept her afloat. In the poem “My Daughter Brings Home Bones,” the daughter seems to be remaking the mother.
Also keeping her afloat was Richter’s determination to tell her story. When her first book, "Threshold," came out in 2010, she told an interviewer, “I also see the stubborn part of me — the part that wrote through it all and found words, when no one else could, for the life I was living.”
This article by Penina Ava Taesali is one of a monthly series by members of the Mid-Valley Poetry Society on books by Oregon poets. Contact her at peninataesali@gmail.com.