Flying on Easter
Flying on Easter is a prose-poetic travelogue of life after cancer. Lyrically blending elements of memoir and monologue, the poet reconnects with family, vocation, and marriage, while revisiting various personal geographies—in the moment and in memory—in New England, New York, Indiana, Ireland, Provence, and California. In his work Dan O’Brien explores, as he says in a 2023 interview, “how trauma shatters identity, and in its aftermath we reconfigure and rewrite, as it were, the story of who we were and are and maybe will be.” These are intimate, confiding poems, often humorous or grieving, that seek to convey the gratitude, astonishment, and hope of survival.
EXCERPT
“The Voices of Doctors” in Verse Daily