Standing in the Forest of Being Alive

By Katie Farris

Standing in the Forest of Being Alive is a memoir-in-poems that reckons with erotic love even as the narrator is diagnosed and treated for breast cancer at the age of thirty-six during a time of pandemic and political upheaval.

With humor and honesty, the book portrays both the pleasures and the horrors of the lover, the citizen, and the medical subject. How can we find, in the midst of hell, what isn’t hell? And whom can we tell how much we want to live? An intimate, hilarious and devastating look into some of the most private moments of a life—even if they happen to occur in a medical office with six strangers looking on.

This book is for anyone who's ever asked how to live in the face of suffering, and doesn't expect an easy answer. Standing in the Forest of Being Alive looks unflinchingly at painful realities, posing the question "What isn't hell?" and finds the answer in a powerful eros, letting a loved one pull laughter out of the narrator's reluctant mouth like a "redvioletcerulean handkerchief."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781949944235

Book preview

Cover: Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, A Memoir in Poems by Katie Farris

More Praise for Katie Farris’

STANDING IN THE FOREST OF BEING ALIVE

"The real genius of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive is how Katie Farris’ poems orbiting her cancer continuously turn toward wonder, deep wonder made wise by having known profound suffering: One must train oneself to find, in the midst of hell, / what isn’t hell. The poems braid the incessant urgent demands of a sick body with the incessant urgent demands of a sick country, a dying earth. The effect is brilliant, vertiginous—but also kind of shockingly readable and, importantly, often really funny. Farris has given us a truly wise, unforgettable, delight-full book."

‒ KAVEH AKBAR, author of the award-winning Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Precise, imaginative, full of life: in the midst of shock and pain, this book rings with love of language.

‒ RAE ARMANTROUT, author of Pulitzer-Prize winning Versed

"One must train oneself to find, in the midst of hell, what isn’t hell, Farris writes in her poem… finding one’s way through the inferno of cancer survival, of writing despite and with the body, commending to paper the luminous terror of having come through."

‒ CAROLYN FORCHÉ, Pulitzer-Prize finalist for In the Lateness of the World

With its immersive magic and unforgettable imagery, life surges through this gorgeous book that rewards and rewards.

‒ THE LITERARY REVIEW

"Farris writes a gorgeous self-elegy: ‘I will need a rope/to let me down into the earth./I’ve hidden others/strategically around the globe,/a net to catch/my body in its weaving.’ She provides an account of the dailiness of illness, long after the visitors disappear.