Song and Dance

The poems in Alan Shapiro''s seventh collection Song and Dance intimately describe the complicated feelings that attend the catastrophic loss of a loved one. In 1998 Shapiro''s brother David an actor on Broadway was diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer. Song and Dance recounts the poet''s emotional journey through the last months of his brother''s life exploring feelings too often ignored in official accounts of grief: horror relief impatience exhaustion exhilaration fear self-criticism fulfillment.