Incantation

Canadian-born humorist David Rakoff died on August 9th from cancer. He was 47. Last April, he contributed a short essay to O, The Oprah magazine on how reciting Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Letter to N.Y" helped to calm him during his MRIs.

"Lying on the table, it can sometimes feel like I've been in treatment longer than I've been alive; that my world has contracted and been bricked over and this is who I am and will only ever be. There is solace in the poem's portrait of New York City, my home for close to three decades. It's a New York not just of my healthier but of my younger self. And it's nice to think of it all still being there, waiting for me, just as soon as I get up and walk out of this room."