The story of a poet’s heart: How a collection of poetry survived its author’s death

This is a story of persistence, heart, death and love. 

Saara Myrene Raappana’s debut poetry collection, “Chamber After Chamber,” was published this spring, just days after her death of cancer at age 48. 

Raappana, who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before settling in Marshall, worked on the book for over 10 years. The collection is written in rich, visceral language and interwoven with stanzas of a long poem, entitled “When I Say Heart, I Mean.” That poem travels in swift strokes from Richard the Lionheart to a bio 101 dissection table to the muscle that keeps us alive.

"Chamber After Chamber” was published in April by the University of Massachusetts Press, where it won the prestigious Juniper Prize.

But the book almost didn’t happen. 

“We know that the book was rejected at least 165 times,” said her husband, Eric Doise. “She finalist-ed or semifinalist-ed ... we actually stopped counting in the 20s. We actually kinda got to the point where finalisting and semifinalisting just made us mad. Like, again? Just tell us it’s bad at this point.” 

Most poetry collections in the U.S. are published by small presses, through contests and reading periods that open at varied times of year. Both Doise and Raappana understood the writing-and-submitting life. Doise is an associate professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. He wrote academic papers. They were each other’s most frequent readers.

During the pandemic, the gym that Raappana co-owned shuttered and the university class she was teaching switched to distance learning. At the time, Raappana wrote in a Facebook post that continuing to send out her work and receiving rejections was making her sad.

She was going to focus her attention elsewhere for a while.  

But Doise kept sending out the manuscript, with his wife’s permission. It’s something he’s a bit reluctant to talk about, insisting, “I didn’t do this so this would be about me.” He says he falls in a long line of spouses quietly supporting each other’s writing and publishing careers. 

And so it was that Doise was the first to see the email that started “Congratulations!” and ended with a publication offer. He recalled the precise moment in March of 2023. 

“I was at my office at work, and I had to close the door because I just was crying out of just, happiness.” 

He had a grand plan to print the email and give it to her in a card over dinner, he said, but the next thing he knew, he was dialing her number. “I just was so overjoyed. And Saara heard me crying and thought that I was upset, and she was very ready to have words with whoever made me sad.”  

The next few weeks were filled with “pinch-me” moments as they reminded each other her book was going to be a reality.

On April 1, 2023, the press officially announced the news.   

But there was another story of persistence happening as well. For months Raappana had experienced headaches, balance issues and moments of derealization that she thought might be panic attacks. For months, she’d been asking for an MRI. 

Finally, on April 6, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which Raappana later learned was glioblastoma — a particularly aggressive form of cancer.  

What followed were travels to Mayo for surgery, then radiation. Then wait-and-see.

On Valentine’s Day 2024, they learned the cancer had spread, and there was nothing more doctors could do.  

“She actually outlived the initial prognosis,” said Doise. “She kinda bounced back when she heard the initial prognosis, which was a very Saara thing to do. She was like, I’m not going to let that happen.” 

Saara Myrene Raappana died March 27. Her book came out five days later.

She did get a chance to see the final product and to learn of its initial — and rather stunning — success. 

Chelsey Harris, marketing and sales manager for the University of Massachusetts Press, recalled that pre-sale orders for “Chamber After Chamber” were pouring in a week or two before launch.  

“Amazon was placing several orders of a hundred-plus copies, which is unusual.”  

A first print run is estimated to last for six months to a year, but the books sold out so quickly that the press had to order a second printing run — and then a third.

Harris said “Chamber After Chamber” had been the judges’ far-and-away top choice to publish. But a book’s quality doesn’t always translate into high sales. She attributed the high early sales to Raappana, Doise and their families, saying that any time they mentioned the book on social media, there was a sales bump.  

Raappana was alive when her book went into a second run. According to Doise, “She just would look at me and say, ‘How does that happen? Like, this is impossible that it’s a second run already.’ ... So that success is something that in her final week or so really brought her a lot of joy and a lot of comfort." 

“Obviously I missed Saara the person, but I think one of the things that I’m sad about is that — especially sad about is that — I don’t get to read any more new things by her. That was one of my favorite things about being her partner, was getting first look at what she was working on.” 

The poems in the book are loosely autobiographical, but the voice of the work, Doise says, that surprising, insightful, brutally honest voice — that was Raappana, still speaking. 

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