Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. As we get older, many of us will develop diseases and conditions that will menace not only our bodies, but also the spiritual nature of our humanity and our most personal definitions of who we are. How do we value our lives when we are faced with onerous interventions of the body to staunch dwindling expectations of the soul? In his dry-eyed journey through 12 years of life with and despite polycystic kidney disease, G. Murray Thomas offers no easy answers, not even when he is presented with the boon of a new kidney and a revolutionary extension of his life. Instead, he chronicles the simple and personal truths--all seen through a refreshingly unsentimental lens. He allows his typewriter to do the thinking for him without digressions into self-pity, and he nixes unwieldy wrestling sessions with grandiosity in favor of pinpointing the truth, which sometimes pops up in the damnedest places. Thomas doesn't mine his experience to forge poetry. He merely adds to the record, and the poetry arrives. This collection is an account of what happened, and it bristles with the gentle intelligence and humor of a poet of great maturity--Amélie Frank.
