RIP Anya Silver

We were saddened this week to hear of the passing of Georgia poet Anya Silver. At GPB Radio News, Grant Blankenship writes of Silver, "Death enraged her, moved her to compassion and incited her to worry for her son, all of which she wrote about in her poetry published in four books and dozens of journals, but she was never afraid of talking about it. In fact, as a poet Silver thought it was her job to see that her reader confront death as she had." More:

Anya Krugovoy Silver passed away this week from inflammatory breast cancer.

Silver received her cancer diagnosis in 2004 while pregnant. That she would live the rest of her life with cancer while raising a son was something that she struggled with, a struggle reflected in her poem “Psalm 137 For Noah” from her book “Second Bloom”.

“My son, my roe deer, my rock rent stream, my honeysuckle, my salt, my golden spear. Forgive me your birth in this strange land. I wanted your infant caresses, your fists clasped around my neck. I craved you though you were born in the wake of my illness, my dim prognosis….”

Despite those misgivings, Silver said she felt no guilt about becoming a mother.

“I decided that the joy of life and the beauty and connection of life were more important than the chance of suffering,” she told Celeste Headlee.

Continue reading at GPB Radio News, and find more of Silver's poetry here.