Cleavage by Wendy Mannis Scher

Native to no particular place, Wendy Mannis Scher was born in Boston and spent her childhood and adolescence along the coastlines of Wales, Delaware, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Maryland before moving to the landlocked heights of Colorado. She has a BA in English Literature from Smith College, a BS in Pharmacy from the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska/Anchorage. Currently, Wendy lives with her family in a canyon west of Boulder, Colorado. https://wendymscher.com/ @wmscher @PoetryStash @wmscher.bsky.social

Since I first found delight in Wendy Scher‘s compelling chapbook, Fault, I have been anticipating her debut collection, and Cleavage does not disappoint. Scher’s Cleavage chronicles one woman’s cancer diagnosis, treatment, and years in the after, where the ephemeral, the beautiful, and the difficult weave together a landscape that extends beyond the human-made realm, and the speaker encourages us to recognize the necessity of even “ribbons of grass.” Scher’s exquisite use of poetic forms — from the sonnet, sestina, and burning haibun to the cento and the pantoum — deepens the resonance of her chosen subjects, displaying a keen sense of design and formal adroitness. Scher’s poetry allows us to see and feel the full breadth of our tender existences and shared environments. Narrative and lyrical, forthright and subtle, imagistic and reflective, the poems in Cleavage are rich and sonorous. This is a collection for which I am grateful.

–Tara Ballard, author of House of the Night Watch

Wendy Scher’s Cleavage embodies a body in transformation. Through odes, prayers, postcards, etymological examinations, excisions, and reconfigurations, Scher’s poems navigate the negative capability of being in the moment whilst soaring above it.

–Lisa Birman, author of How To Walk Away

Wendy Scher’s poems navigate illness with such fortitude that the reader discovers even devastation can be molded into a new story. Alive with grace and resourcefulness, Scher’s poetry variously frames her cancer experience as an episode of Jeopardy, a postcard from her journey, or with the delicate precision of haiku. Cleavage tells a personal story, but that story’s “thrum-rush” pulses into the wonder and perplexities of a constantly enlarging world. Here, grief shares its bond with all living things, and, in so doing, brings healing.

–Elizabeth Robinson, author of Vulnerability Index

In her book Cleavage, Wendy Scher gives us poems of fierce clarity. She pinpoints moments of beauty and humor, even in wrestling with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Scher speaks of “psalms for dark times,” and she delivers those and so much more in this visionary and deeply moving collection.

–Zack Rogow, author of Irreverent Litanies and Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Cleavage cuts through the trope of the “patient patient.” Scher’s poems are bold in their honesty and form, in their vulnerability alongside clinical diction. Hope exists despite sickness. Scars (literal and figurative) exist despite healing. “[E]ven numb, you feel the difference.”

–Lisa Stice, author of Letters from Conflict