This moving prose poem tells the story of an aged man who suffers a prolonged and ultimately fatal illness. From initial diagnosis to remission to relapse to death, the experience is narrated by the man’s son, a practicing doctor. Charles Bardes, a physician and poet, draws on years of experience with patients and sickness to construct a narrative that links myth, diverse metamorphoses, and the modern mechanics of death. We stand with the doctors, the family, and, above all, a sick man and his disease as their voices are artfully crafted into a new and powerful language of illness.

Charles Bardes is an internal medicine specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and professor of clinical medicine and associate dean at Weill Cornell Medical College. His books include Pale Faces: The Masks of Anemia, and his poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Agni, Ploughshares, and Raritan.

— Michael Collier, author of An Individual History

— Susan Stewart, author of Red Rover

— Booklist

— New Georgia Literary Arts Achievement Award

— New Georgia Literary Achievement Award (now the Blackwell Prize in Writing)