Scud Clouds

by David Keller and Eloise Bruce

We are poets and for many years we have written about our life both separately and together. This book is a result of a journey that began in earnest when David's Uncle George was diagnosed with a very rare form of dementia called CADASIL, cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. It is one of those diseases that run in families: If one parent has it, there is 50% chance their child will have it. The trajectory of the disease was not identified before George Keller was diagnosed, though it is certain the gene had been passed down for a very long time. However, David's grandmother and his father died in their fifties before their symptoms presented.

Scud Clouds is wonderful. With clarity, honesty, and marvelously telling detail, these two gifted poets evoke the depths and complexities of their continuing life together after David is diagnosed with an incurable brain disease. While confronting darkness and loss, these side-by-side poems are also full of love, warmth and laughter. Readers who have known or cared for someone facing dementia will find support and comfort in this accessible and profoundly moving collection. 
   —Susan Allen Toth, No Saints around Here: A Caregivers Days

When David Keller was diagnosed with a rare form of dementia, he and his wife Eloise Bruce entered strange new territory, yet, being poets, they kept on writing. The gift of their poems, which are neither collaborations nor strict call and response but rather a subtler sinuous pas de deux, is to invite us in. Generous, philosophical, witty, tender, and heart-breaking, these poems are not so much about disease as they are about the divagations of the mind—among the odd disappearances and reappearances of memories, through dreams, and amid the omens of ordinary life. Thus, they also speak piercingly to us about the work of the heart to endure and find joy wherever it can, while it can.
   —Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Letters from Limbo