Poet's Choice

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By Mary Karr

Sunday, June 1, 2008

My friend Jason Shinder was 52 when he succumbed to leukemia last month. A poet, Jason also founded the Writer's Voice program at New York's West Side YMCA, which spread nationwide, furthering poetry's far-flung infiltrations. Jason's poem "One Day I Will Die" enjoins us to hug each instant hard enough to forge a diamond from the coal. He did. For that, and for his words, I'm grateful.

How proud I am

to be the center

of a tragedy.

Again

and again

the same shadow.

Thank you God.

Thank you shadow.

Happy is the man

who looks into

the deepest folds