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About the Author
Events & Readings
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SAMPLES
Road Trip to Duke published in Mud Season Review
Second Opinion published in Rattle
How Fast it Grows published in South 85 Journal
IN THE NEWS
One-page press release
Riding it Out, article originally published in Coastal Virginia Magazine
Imagine being told at your annual physical that you have lung cancer. Then, in a follow-up that you have a year left to live. One year. That's all. Imagine having to squeeze all your dreams and plans for the future onto the pages of a single wall calendar. That is what happened to Dawn West, who is still alive today, 26 years after that terminal diagnosis. She and Bill Glose had been dating for a month when she received the devastating news. In Terminal Diagnosis, Bill revisits that traumatic year that Dawn was not expected to live beyond, the fears and questions that kept both of them awake at night, and the stunning relief when the tumor shrank and disappeared. While many poems relive the terror of those sleepless nights, in the end, this is a book about hope winning out, a message sorely needed in today's fractious climate and an example for families touched by cancer of what is possible.
"You do not step lightly into these poems of Bill Glose. Terminal Diagnosis hurtles us into heights and drops of hope and lament as extreme as the roller coaster ride in "Death Day." These are love poems in search of language to carry the poet's heartbreak after viewing his girlfriend's x-ray with its "dot of pure white"—"so little for something that can swallow a universe." For Glose, "tongues [are] too heavy for hymns," as he writes in "Singer." For us, each poem is a gift into which he has lavished all his loves: foremost, the love for his woman, Dawn, but for nature and science, history and literature, all seamlessly crafted into this remarkable collection ten years in the making. For me, as it will be for you, there is no getting off the ride."
Suzanne Underwood Rhodes
Arkansas Poet Laureate.
"In illuminating and compelling poems, Bill Glose offers a clear-sighted view of the strength a cancer patient must muster when confronting a health crisis. Throughout Terminal Diagnosis, the speaker gleans wisdom from standing by the side of his pragmatic lover, who gains his admiration by remaining positive and looking toward the light. Each insight occurs in the blink of an eye, disclosing that there's "so little sway on who gets stung/ and who barrels through life unscathed." Collectively, these lyrically intense and emotionally riveting poems remind us of the importance of valuing each moment as if it's our last."
Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda
Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita
"In this unabashedly intimate collection of Glose's, we are given a brave unwinding of the so many "necessary lies," the murmured platitudes and pastel condolences we weave when encountering someone with uncertain health outcomes. The heavy, too often silent weight of a caregiver's anxiety shines through for the aching humanness it is, a rollercoaster of a story to which we can all, at some point, relate. More than that, these poems put us face to face with our own mortality in the everyday rhythm of our magnificent little lives, both precious and fragile, and leave us—despite the direness of the collection's title—with hope."
Joanna Lee, MD
Poet Laureate Emerita of Richmond, Virginia.