Review by Mary Ellen Talley
We enter Laura Garrard’s debut poetry chapbook, Paddling the Sweet Spot Between Life and Death, with “Paddling the Sweet Spot,” a poem in quatrains that introduces readers to strength and strategy in water sports as it instructs how to aim for “a diagonal / In between the edges of waves.” However, that perfection is tenuous and “not easy to maintain” (5).
The above hint of metaphor becomes apparent when we read the second poem about this speaker’s cancer diagnosis in “My Body Speaks.” With the first line comes revelation, “I ask my body why it has a tumor.” Later the speaker asks her body “what she needs” (6). This is the first of nine poignant pieces scattered throughout that are poems of address or that are in conversation regarding her cancer.
At a pre-sales book launch reading, Pacific Northwest writer and artist Laura E. Garrard shared that all poems in this collection were written post her own myeloma diagnosis. Several poems integrate nature with scarring and healing. In “The Way of Instinct is to Feed and Grow,” the speaker watches barn swallows and a fledgling bird. They become metaphor for the cancer patient engaged in nurturing herself (29):
Is this a full turn,
a parenting one?
Now that days caretake
my fledgling body,
Anger rises in the poem “I’m Not the Heroine in Your Cancer Novel.” This patient demonstrates expertise and self-advocacy as she asserts her own path to healing. Reading Garrard’s work encourages those with health challenges to participate in decision-making with their medical providers (15):
I’m not in a battle with cancer,
I’m enduring to heal my mind-body,
So don’t misappropriate my story,
If it’s macabre and victory you want,
Read a war novel.
The poem, “Homage to My Radiated Hip,” reminds one of the poet Lucille Clifton’s independent and gutsy affection for her body. Garrard’s palindrome poem in couplets moves forward and then reverses. She reminds us that being kind is an essential gift we give ourselves. There are times as women we need to offer mothering to our bodies. The poem begins (28):
I am finally kind to my broken body
when she pops her hip, limps her leg.
I do not shout down my spine
but coo and coax like a loving mother
Free verse and prose poems in this collection traverse Kubler-Ross stages of grief as medical challenges are faced. In “The Only Else There Is, the Breath,” the speaker expresses despair, “Oh God / You have to heal me” (7).
Several poems refer to traditional concepts of a higher power as well as Asian and Indigenous spirituality. Examples include “I Surrender All” and “Elegy to a Cancer Altar.” In the latter poem, the speaker dismantles the altar and announces from her home at Lake Crescent (21):
The table is spare & clean.
A chapter has concluded,
not the disease.
My blood is the altar
and swims.
Many poems express the healing power of nature and a person’s inner power, whether known as will, resilience, hope, or joy. For example, when the speaker is past anger and despair, and into levels of acceptance, we find her outfitted in mask and snorkel with other women trailing spotted dolphins at the Atlantis-Bimini Sanctuary, off the coast of Miami. Here in, “Filled to the Brim,” she senses herself descending, comforted by playful dolphins, and “exhaling cancer cells” (25).
Grief is a character in this collection, but only as part of the story. The speaker imagines the type of deep sadness she doesn’t want her husband to have to experience in “Some Days, I Grieve Your Grief.” She faces grief when a friend succumbs to cancer in “Does Grief Die” where Garrard writes “I no longer draw a line where life ends / And where grief begins” (31).
Laura E. Garrard references the book’s title again in a prose piece, “Sailing in the Sunshine.” She shares the lesson she has learned, that “Somewhere between (determination and will) and (surrender and acceptance) is a sweet spot of flow called letting go.” She highlights “immediate joy” and “inner exaltation” (24).
Paddling the Sweet Spot Between Life and Death follows a strong and inquisitive woman in the ebb and flow of a cancer journey from grief to acceptance. Laura E. Garrard’s beautiful chapbook will appeal to poetry lovers and health professionals, as well as to individuals challenged with health afflictions and their loved ones. Readers will want to savor and reread Garrard’s words.
Paddling the Sweet Spot Between Life and Death by Laura E. Garrard
Finishing Line Press, 2026, 36 pages, $17.99, [paper]
ISBN: (Forthcoming, book will be released 3-27-2026)
Mary Ellen Talley’s poems appear in journals and anthologies, plus in three chapbooks. Her book reviews appear in journals, including Crab Creek Review and Asheville Poetry Review. Visit: www.maryellentalley.com.