Peggy Shumaker, a stalwart supporter of Alaska writers and the larger arts community, is a professor emerita from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a former Alaska writer laureate. Author of nine previous books of poetry plus a lyrical memoir, Shumaker has brought to light a new collection that responds to aging and the loss of friends and loved ones.
At the start, in “Month of Tuesdays,” Shumaker honors her late husband Joe with a litany of medical procedures and responses on consecutive Thursdays. Specifics of the days beat rhythmically as she speaks of the surgeon who “… split your sternum, / cut away an artery / feeding your chest wall, / stitched it to the starving / part of your heart” and progresses to “ … the Thursday / you hugged to your chest / that heart-shaped pillow.” – Nancy Lord, Anchorage Daily News