Divine Honors

Winner of the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry (2002)

This elegant and moving collection documents Hilda Raz's experience with breast cancer. The journey, from diagnosis to chemotherapy to mastectomy, from denial to humor to grief and rage, is ultimately one of courage and creativity. The poems themselves are accessible and finely wrought. They are equally testaments to Raz's insistence on making an order out of chaos, of finding ways to create and understand and eventually accept new definitions of good and evil, health, blame, personal boundaries – in short, a new sense of self. These poems remain intimately bound to the world and of the senses, becoming documents of transformation.