The Scars, Aligned

The Scars, Aligned (A Cancer Narrative), Brad Buchanan's new book of poems, follows his amazing yet terrifying journey through the many phases of a cancer patient's experience: uncertainty, paranoia, diagnosis, acceptance, expectancy, crisis, treatment, and finally recovery. The narrative working through these poems is a powerful and universal one, but Buchanan's unique relationship to language (whether it be medical terms, the work of classic poets, or the details of an intensely lived physical and emotional ordeal) make this book far more than a mere succession of unfortunate events. These poems will drag you headlong into heaven and hell, then put you back down gently, with a new gratitude for everyday things. If surviving cancer is worthwhile, then this book is worth reading. And re-reading.

Brad Buchanan is Professor Emeritus of English at Sacramento State University. His poetry, fiction, and scholarly articles have appeared in nearly 200 journals, and he has also published two book-length collections of poetry: The Miracle Shirker (2005) and Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter (2008), as well as two academic books. He was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma in February 2015, and underwent a stem cell transplant in 2016. He is currently in remission.