Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
Coming Soon!
Little Stone, Little Stone
by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
ISBN: 978-1-962405-88-1
$16.00 (+ $4.63 US Shipping per order)
Pre-Order discount: through July 12
$12.80 (+ $4.63 per order)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke was diagnosed with ovarian cancer stage 2a in May of 2019 and went through six rounds of chemotherapy that summer. Her work has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah and Crab Orchard Review. Her first poetry collection, The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had, is about an Appalachian housewife in the mid-20th century from Kelsay Books in 2024. She sporadically hosts the Meter Cute interview series on the Meter&Mayhem Substack and YouTube channel and serves as a member of the board for Anhinga Press.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Little Stone, Little Stone is one woman’s journey in search of a metaphor other than “battling” for what it means to go through cancer treatment, some word other than “warrior” and “survivor” to say who she is. These poems embody radical honesty tempered with self-compassion while also celebrating the individual lives of celebrities who have had ovarian cancer.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke refuses to behave like “a good little cancer girl.” Emotion, humor, and intellect combine to form a whirlwind that will both destroy and delight you. Schomburg Kanke faces the possibility of her own death as bravely as she faces the death of her herbs: “I beg the plants / to share this space together / though I accept / what will happen will happen, / though I try to accept / sometimes there is only wildness.” The power of that wildness moves through her as she intuits a path toward healing, not just for herself, but for us.
––Brandi George, author of The Nameless (Kernpunkt Press, 2023)
Whether you are a survivor of ovarian cancer, love a survivor, or simply felt the gut punch of knowledge after a celebrity’s diagnosis was announced, Little Stone, Little Stone is a moving, haunting read. Schomburg Kanke’s poems capture not only the more familiar, intimate details from treatment, such as losing her hair and choosing a wig (. . . Even though I know I’ll never wear her / beyond a picture for the socials), but also the imagined voices from survivors who have gone before us, such as the devastating beginning to “Malignant Weight Loss Plan for Rising Stars,” for Elly Mayday: “This is your body, it’s wasting away and / no one believes it’s not helping.” Reading the familiar names, symptoms, stories––I felt seen. Little Stone, Little Stone delves into narratives of all kinds––Schomburg Kanke’s own chemo treatments gone sideways, the dreaded pinkwashing of October (“it haunts me like a favorite ghost all month”), the indignities of treatment and aftermath. Readers will recognize some names (Gilda Radner, Andrea Gibson) and will also be introduced to others that they don’t yet know, but should (Robert Eads, Smita Talwakar). Beauty peeks through, but it is never saccharine. This book is a treasure.
––Megan Kerns, ovarian cancer survivor
