Rethinking Repair by Monica Rentfrow

One thing is certain in reading Monica Rentfrow’s fierce, gentle, and courageous book Rethinking Repair—that the wise and beautiful spirit behind these words needs no fixing but will in radiant truth live forever in the hearts and minds of those who read her and those who knew her. In one poem she exclaims “There are no hospitals in heaven!”—and somehow I feel she is telling us this right now in the quick-alive present moment when her words are more precious and powerful than ever. She will forever be my courage teacher of human joy in the midst of so much physical pain and endurance. Read this holy book for courage, for laughter, and for the timeless healing ache of eternal love.

–Robert Vivian, author of The Tall Grass Trilogy and Mystery My Country

In the past few years American medical schools have introduced revolutionary curricula that integrate the arts and humanities with the arts of healing, and Monica Rentfrow‘s  poems are as good an example as we might find to illustrate how poetry can come to the aid of a person with serious medical problems. I was very much saddened when the world lost this spirited, optimistic young poet, who was just getting a start on what would have been a significant literary life.

–Ted Kooser, U. S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Rethinking Repair makes a significant contribution to disability poetry, providing not just insight to the experiences of a young woman with a diagnosis of dwarfism but a first scaffolding from which other writers can build their own work.  Poems such as “The Bone Room” are as powerful now as when they were first written.

–Michael Northen, editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability