Death Work

<p>Always read a book of poems back to front so that the wave rolls backward… Now apply the same method to your whole life.</p><p>In Death Work the poet does just that. By rewinding fragments from memory he bears witness to attachment and its eventual unraveling. This is the point where the sheer weight of a man's past opens his heart to the mystery. The Japanese have a word for it: jisei death poems that express a sudden alertness to the fact of this world and the emergence of another. Death Work tracks one man’s descent into clarity a decompression chamber linking life and death. “Thought is a staircase” he writes then erases it.</p>