Max Ritvo, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight, Dies at 25 - The New York Times

Mr. Ritvo’s body bore three tattoos depicting birds that he had acquired after enduring each new wound or scar. “He wanted to juxtapose it,” Ms. Ritvo explained, referring to his cancer, “with something beautiful.”... In Max Ritvo’s final weeks, he remained cleareyed. In a podcast interview on Aug. 14 with the media personality Dr. Drew Pinsky, he said, his voice weak, “This is end-of-life stuff.” Over time, he said, his work had shifted “away from sort of ebullient death poetry and fighting poetry and poetry of, sort of, the bloods and the squirmies and the guts, and more toward trying to figure out what death is, and what my place in the world is.” His poetry sustained him, his family said. “He said the day he stopped writing, that would be the end of it,” his wife said in an interview. She added: “He was writing three days before he died.”

Max Ritvo, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight, Dies at 25 - The New York Times: