Description
Book SynopsisA portrait of marriage, caretaking, grief, and recovery. Carole Stone’s
Limited Editions is an end-of-life narrative journey, from her long-term marriage to the illness and death of her husband. Stone’s honest, understated, and detailed poems, each packed with narrative, bring us to the heart of her loss. Stone does not flinch in her descriptions of her husband’s suffering and dying moments. She dispassionately describes the everyday details of coping with being on her own—from daily household chores to the loneliness of being single as an aging woman. With Stone’s crisp observations and raw honesty,
Limited Editions challenges the reader to think about death, grief, widowhood, and aging as a natural process in the life cycle.
Trade Review“In
Limited Editions, Carole Stone describes the arc of a long marriage, from an initial blind date to a green wedding dress, an Acapulco honeymoon, and all ‘the ups and downs / of forever.’ Those ups and downs ultimately come to include the sometimes painful, sometimes peaceful solitudes of widowhood. Clear-eyed yet tender-hearted, these poems are rich with the details of a shared life—beloved novels, kugel recipes, the
Times crossword finished each morning—both as it’s lived and as it’s remembered, and illustrate how a couple can become so intertwined that ‘Sometimes you were me. / Sometimes I was you.’” * Matthew Thorburn, author of "String" *
Quietly inspiring in both content and craft, Carole Stone's Limited Editions is a testament to the indefatigable human spirit . . . .This is an optimistic book, marked by humility, gratitude, and awe. Stone without ambivalence asks us to focus after a loved one's death on that which remains, as in "Egg": "Dear egg, forgive me / for not believing / in an afterlife. You are enough."
* The East Hampton Star *
Table of ContentsFortune
I
Blind Date
Joyce Group
Grounded
Day Trip to Brighton
The Luxembourg Gardens
Long Marriage
In the Matter of Pumpkin Soup
Farmers Market
Flamingo
Limited Editions
Pairs
II
Our Buddha
Kugel
Caretaker
Crime Show
Underworld
End of the Line
Paradox
The Men Die First
Long Division
A Space
Leaves
III
Dust
Vanilla
Joy
Down Mexico Way
My One
Progress Report
Whatever it Takes
Letter to You
IV
Living Is All
Be Happy
On Parole
This Happiness
Three Day Weekend
Spring Again
Lines Written at Louse Point
Still Me
V
Egg
Return Visit
Gift
A Day Behind
A Question of Travel
The Lost
Spine
On That Day
Acknowledgements
