When All the World Is Old

At the age of 29, just five years after they met, John Rybicki's wife, the poet Julie Moulds, was diagnosed with cancer. Here, in poems raw and graceful, authentic and wise, Rybicki pays homage to the brave love they shared during her 16-year battle and praises the caregivers nurses and doctors and friends who helped them throughout. He invites readers to bear witness to not only the chemotherapy, the many remissions, and the bone marrow transplants, but also the adoption of the couple's son, the lifted prayers, the borrowed time, and the lovers' last touches. A husband smashes an ice-cream cone against his forehead to make his wife laugh. He awakens in the middle of the night to find their dog drowsing atop a pile of her remnant clothes. The lamentations and celebrations of When All the World Is Old create a living testament to an endless love. Braided with intimate entries from Moulds's journal, these poems become the unflinching and lyric autobiography of a man hurtling himself hea

Poet John Rybicki was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He is the author of the poetry collections Traveling at High Speeds (1996) and We Bed Down Into Water: Poems (2008). His third collection, When All the World Is Old (2012), was written in response to the long illness and death of his wife, the poet Julie Moulds. His poems have been published in The Best American Poetry 2008, Alaska Quarterly Review, Field, the Paris Review, and Poetry.

Rybicki has been a writer-in-residence at Alma College in Alma, Michigan. He teaches poetry to young writers through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project and Wings of Hope Hospice. He lives in Michigan with his son.