Impossible Flying

Renowned poet Kwame Dawes presents his most personal and universal work in this collection of carefully arranged poems. Separated into four thematic sections, these poems reveal the author's family secrets with an overarching coherence and meaning, focusing primarily on the triangular relationship between himself, his father, and his younger brother. Establishing his family's mythology and the hopes that were invested in his brother, the verses also detail his brother's descent into madness and the resulting downfall that brought about his father's premature death, the poet's later-renewed relationship with his brother, and his attempts to bridge the gap between their disparate worldsall with intensity, tautness, and eloquence.

Kwame Dawes is a professor of English and distinguished poet in residence at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius, Midland, New and Selected Poems, and A Place to Hide and the coauthor of I Saw Your Face.