Chronicle of an Obsession: Love, Death, and the Prostate by David C. Meyer

Chronicle of an Obsession confronts, with sometimes-unnerving candor, many implications of the “loss of splendor in [the] groin” resulting from successful prostate cancer surgery. Elegiac, rendered in iambic rhythms and subtle networks of rhyme reminiscent of Shakespeare, these poems confront difficult private revelations with formal elegance. And ultimately, they offer a tribute to enduring love between long-married partners who remain intimate as they ultimately understand that they “are more than damaged parts.”

–Leslie Ullman, Professor Emerita, University of Texas, El Paso, Faculty Member, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Author of seven poetry collections, Winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets and Iowa Poetry Prizes and several other prizes and published numerous books.

What happens to a body, a sense of self, and a long erotic love when cancer surgery leads to impotence? Surgery seems a decisive turn – once you had cancer – now you are well. Yet in poems written over some years, Meyer ponders how fear and anger, long love, and late-in-life desires live on as bodies sag and fade. Both readers who rage and those who seek comfort have reason to turn to this collection.

–Jeffrey H. Mahan, Ralph E. and Norma E. Peck Professor Emeritus of Religion and Public Communication, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO

This slim volume is packed with important and challenging responses to a cancer which impacts so many. David’s journey is worth sharing, and I believe it will enrich your own, with or without the specific matter of a confrontation with mortality, including prostate cancer.

–Michael Zedek, Rabbi Emeritus, Emanuel Congregation, Chicago, IL

David Meyer’s wonderful poems are honest, entirely original, funny and true.  His book is like no other.  I intend to read it often.

–Esther Cohen, Book editor, poet, blogger, novelist

These unflinching poems by David C. Meyer explore the aging body, declaring their resounding affirmation that “love’s a flesh beyond flesh failed.” Hovering over all of the poems is the inevitable specter of death, echoing the “little death” of sex. This collection is animated by the energetic tension between desire, pleasure, and carnality, on the one hand, and the “cells forgetting how to live” and the “almost forgotten attentions” of love, on the other.

–Rachel Morgan and Jeremy Schraffenberger, Co-Editors, The North American Review