See If I Feel the Same

In Kathaleen Donnelly’s See If I Feel the Same, as she draws us into her poems by way of soundful and meaningful rhymes (＂Small curls at water’s edge unravel＂ and ＂Straw huts break stifling heat beaming down relentlessly,＂ for example), we’ll surely find that we do feel the same as she observes, say, a woman in Stony Brook tea room or a conscientious objector in Germany in 1942. We are with her as she meditates on persons and places, the seasons, her present time and certain histories that remain with her. There are quiet depths to her voice, her poems are constantly aware of her body, her mind, her hospital work, her karmic inheritance of both good fortunes and tragic memories. This book is companionable. She cares for us as we accompany her through the seasons of mind and heart. She and See If I Feel the Same, fused, welcome us.

-William Heyen, National Book Award Finalist, author, Nature: Selected & New Poems 1970-2020 & Diaspora: 15 Collections

Those of us in caregiving fields learn early that clinical awareness breeds clinical distance. To maintain autonomy and equilibrium in your own life, the capacity to engage and re-engage with the world, clinical awareness is a valuable thing. Not just to caregivers, but particularly in today’s world of suffering and pain, the capacity to know our limitations and go on caring is paramount.

The poetry of Kathaleen Donnelly - nurse, caregiver, poet - presents an extraordinary example of clinical awareness. Her observations are precise, her reflections discriminating, her commitment unshaken. When she hazards a diagnosis, it is a considered one, delivered not with a triumphant shout, but with a knowing sigh.

＂How many neurons do I have before information has nowhere to go? Then all I will have left is what I have known. That would not be good. I embrace this lazy morning... let the day take me.＂ That’s sage advice, and these are poems rich in urgent life-wisdom.

-George Wallace, 2023 writer-in-residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace; first Suffolk County, NY Poet Laureate, 2003-2005