Poem of the Week | June 22, 2015
Bern Mulvey: "Lines Written After My Son's Stroke"
This week we feature a new poem by Bern Mulvey. Poems by Mulvey have appeared, among other places, in Poetry, Agni, FIELD, Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, The Laurel Review, Passages North and Poetry East. His first book, The Fat Sheep Everyone Wants, won the 2007 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize, and his second book, Deep Snow Country, won the 2013 FIELD Poetry Prize. He lives in Iwate, Japan.
Author’s note:
This poem was written over a period of several days this past summer. As I had recently been experimenting with the haiku form, it is made up of stanzas written in that form–though I was influenced as well by Tawara Machi’s work with tanka (e.g., in Sarada Kinnenbi), particularly her way of using a series of these short poems to present (when considered collectively) a coherent narrative. I like the disjointed feel the short stanzas give to the whole, similar to looking at a collection of photos on a particular subject, how a full sense of the collection’s overriding “theme” becomes clear only when viewed in the aggregate. (I wrote this poem after the incident alluded to in the title. My son was 15.)
Lines Written After My Son’s Stroke
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