Almost a Memoir

<p>What would you do if you knew the month of your death? How would you survive that month every year? How would you take advantage of your eleven months of immortality? </p><p><br></p><p><em>Almost a Memoir</em> a new book of poems by M.C. Rydel poses this question and others with a collection of lyrical narratives and metaphysical conceits. Performed since 2010 as spoken word poetry in bars bookstores theatres and coffeehouses in cities as diverse as Chicago New York Grand Rapids Flagstaff and Sedona this book of poems is almost a narrative almost personal experience almost faraway and almost a memoir yet it is always about loss & change work & family friends & lovers cats & dogs moths & bats and Pablo Neruda & Joseph Brodsky. </p><p><br></p><p>This book brings poems from the stage to the page by describing interrupted dreams heroic and ironic journeys villanelles pantoums ballads and thirteen poems from the plague year of 2020. Over 100 characters appear in 67 poems. They live in an apophatic universe. Created and then abandoned. They find themselves looking for signs of divinity in a godless world.</p><p><br></p>