Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. ONE ILLUMINATED LETTER OF BEING is a sequence of poems--by turns lyric, narrative, and dramatic--that limn what it means for a son to watch and be fully present as his mother prepares to die. These poems are about living in the midst of death and about dying, while everything is coming into bloom. The poet records the natural world flowering and fruiting, and its autumnal fading into winter around him. The book bears witness to grief and how this son remembers with exquisite clarity--and comes to terms with--his mother's passing and its aftermath. Anger, great sadness, but also revelation and transformation are the emotional terrain that the poet walks unwaveringly. Wherever he goes, dying illuminates what it means to live.
