In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

148 the widows’ handbook February 11, 1994: Berkeley, Anniversary Waltz Again Sandra M. Gilbert The year revolves toward pink and red, toward the tiny Valentine hearts of the plums, each blossom a pink frill and a core of blood, a frill and its bloody core. . . Three times the nurses wheeled you into the icy room, three quarters of your life just barely over. Three years since you set out for nowhere, three years I’ve studied these blossoms alone, the indifferent flush, the roseate aplomb they set against bare blue. To have gone on becoming without you! Three nights now since we met in sleep, and I told you sorrowfully that you were dead— three nights since you wept in rage, lifted your handsome shadowy head and howled. But how your face has changed! You’re beardless and pale, a different man, a spirit man as if when we were spun away from each other, as if when I took my first three giant steps into another somewhere, memories, ghosts, dreams 149 you too could never be the same, you too had to go on becoming and becoming other, becoming alone. . . As if the only February thing that’s sure to be the same is still the plum tree’s blind pink three-week waltz with air and light and darkness. ...

Share