It’s a new year and I feel ready to leave a decade riddled with much distress behind. Author Susan Gubar suggests “When in Distress, Try Sonnets” in her recent piece in The New York Times. As someone who finds comfort in carefully crafted words, especially poetry, I can certainly get behind this line of thinking.

Gubar, who writes about living with cancer, describes her “dwindling support group” and the lengths some are going to for treatment, “not telling their oncologist about the fortune they are spending on medicines from Cuba.” She acknowledges all that has been lost through her own cancer treatment, the ileostomy requiring “no more nuts, corn, salads, berries or cherries. Long walks and vigorous exercise had to be relinquished, given the major side effect of the daily targeted drug: fatigue. Wishing myself stronger, desiring this woman’s intact body, that other woman’s vigor, I despise myself for the envy that has me in its grip.”

Reflecting on all that she and those around her have been through, Gubar quotes Stuart Scott: “When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live and in the manner in which you live.” Gubar turns to the sonnet to think about this life and how to find consolation when that living gets difficult.

She analyzes the structure of a sonnet through the lens of living with a serious illness: “volatility of sonnets instructs us, I believe, for this short form generally hinges on an internal turn, known as a twist or volta. First there is one absorbing emotion or conviction and yet oddly, unexpectedly, here comes another. The mutability of our moods is captured in the 14 lines of a poem that consoles because variability means not being stuck in one fixed lot.”

Gubar contends that the sonnet, “large in scope but small in size…encapsulates infinitely malleable spirits within a finite frame, as we do.” I like this idea of the sonnet holding endless possibilities within a particular framework. Our own bodies are similarly confined, in space and in time, yet the spirit is expansive beyond imagination.

She notes the lesson of change inherent in sonnets, the fact that “even when a wretched situation deteriorates in the miniature world of the sonnet, it speaks of change.” Sonnets, like life, don’t offer decisive closure, yet convey the truth that “till the very close…our lives are spiced and spliced.”

Writing Prompt: Choose a sonnet listed by Gubar and use a word or line that resonates with you as a prompt to write about your own life illness or challenge. Alternatively, think about the idea that we are “infinitely malleable spirits within a finite frame.” Write about your own “frame” or body and how it has supported or failed you. Consider several “spirits” you’ve embodied that have changed over time, or that you hope to embody in your lifetime. Write for 10 minutes.