A Review of Martha Silano's Terminal Surreal

In Terminal Surreal, poet Martha Silano confronts her diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) with a collection that is at once contemplative, defiant, and unwaveringly honest. Published just months after Silano’s death, the collection’s structure traces a loose arc, beginning with the author’s first signs of illness and continuing through its progression. Yet, rather than embracing a purely linear timeline, these poems weave together moments of uncertainty and realization, experimenting with form in a way that feels deeply connected to Silano’s reckoning with mortality. Although her diagnosis, symptoms, and meditations on death are recurring themes, Silano’s poems range widely, engaging with numerous facets of the human experience: the intimacy and complications of family, the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and expansive ruminations on science, time, and the cosmos.

In several of her poems, Silano reminds us that we are merely a small part of a large ecological system, that transience is inevitable, and that the matter which makes up our bodies is connected to everything around us. In “When I Can’t Get out of Bed,” for example, Silano considers “that the universe ‘and even ourselves’ are holograms, / like those rainbowy things on our credit cards,” and that “we’re all the sum total of every atom / we’ve cavorted with.” By situating herself within this framework, Silano acknowledges the vastness of the human experience and wrestles with what it means to be part of something bigger than oneself. These moments of interconnectedness counter the isolation of illness, urging us to reach beyond solitude through an awareness of the many webs of connection that exist in our world. Additionally, this frames illness not as a deficiency, but as an essential component of existence. Through her work, Silano centers those with terminal diagnoses and reconfigures them as fundamental to our understanding of both the human experience and the natural world.

Throughout the collection, Silano’s inquisitiveness about herself and the world around her is also reflected in her linguistic and poetic choices. She incorporates several abecedarians, prose poetry, and a double triptych while utilizing word play and vacillating between formal and informal language. This experimentation reflects Silano grappling with her diagnosis and its accompanying symptoms, but it also reveals her refusal to shrink herself or her creative work. In a world that so often attempts to push chronically ill individuals to the margins, Silano takes up space with aplomb and joy. Through this formal play, she centers her own multiplicity and the many ways of creating a life filled with creativity, curiosity, and community.

For example, in her poem “How to Fall,” which concerns itself with the safest way to fall without catastrophic injury–a necessity for someone with a destabilizing illness–Silano writes “Prioritize not bashing your noggin–that makes good sense / cuz hitting it could be deadly.” Here, Silano’s informality is in direct opposition to the serious nature of the warning, pointing out that what to some could be a minor injury or inconvenience is, to others, a potentially fatal accident. Later, in “What I’ll Miss,” she writes that it “prob won’t be sycamores” but “I know I’ll def miss / the return of the swallows to Seattle on or about March 18th, / the violet-greens, their acrobatic flights along and across the lake.” These uses of abbreviation and slang seem to serve a dual purpose. For one thing, they reflect the abbreviation of a life, the necessity of quickly sharing one’s thoughts before time runs out. For another, they reveal Silano’s beautifully accessible and sometimes humorous style of writing. These informalities and injections of humor do not underplay the gravity of Silano’s terminal illness, but rather create a sense of agency and complexity in her response to it.  

Silano’s family also features prominently in the collection, often noted as active participants in the experience of ALS. In the poem, “Is This My Last Ferry Trip?” Silano recounts sharing a bowl of clam chowder with “the man / otherwise known as my personal / representative” who will eventually assist her to “administer / the cocktail that kills.” This is a somber fact, but rather than ruminating on it, Silano goes on to describe the things that they’ll do in the meantime and a phone call from their daughter, all of which create an environment in which “we almost forget one of us is dying.” By weaving the mundane into a heartbreaking reality, Silano both crafts the “surreal” of the title and emphasizes how ordinary domestic routines often coexist with intense anticipatory grief. This juxtaposition forces us to consider the ways a diagnosis can ripple outward, becoming part of the fabric of a family’s life. Rather than reducing her family to mere witnesses of illness, Silano recognizes them as partners in a shared experience. 

Ultimately, Terminal Surreal is a vibrant meditation of what it means to live when the reality of death becomes impossible to escape. Through evocative imagery, powerful honesty, and unexpected turns, Silano takes the reader through a journey in which there are no answers, but plenty of questions that serve to make life interesting. As a collection, Terminal Surreal deservedly claims a space in the legacy of disability literature. In an ableist world that is so often afraid to speak about mortality in anything beyond a whisper, Silano’s poems shout unflinchingly, sharing the abundance and complexity of life with a terminal illness.

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Jackie Martin is an educator and writer from the Boston area. Her work has been published by Jabberwocky, New Pages, Heuer Publishing, Smith & Kraus, Applause Books, YouthPLAYS, and Pioneer Drama. Jackie is currently a graduate student pursuing her MA in English at Bridgewater State University. When she is not reading, writing, grading, or planning, she delights in spending time with her husband, two children, and cats.