Breakwater Rock

Author:   Bruce Lawder
Publisher:   Homestead Lighthouse Press
ISBN:  

9781950475421


Pages:   80
Publication Date:   15 May 2025
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Available To Order   Availability explained
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Breakwater Rock


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Overview

For years I had wanted to write a book of poems that would bring together, geographically, the two halves of my life, first in the United States, where I grew up, and then in Europe, where I now live. I was not sure how I would find the diversity of voices for such a project, but then one day something totally unexpected occurred. As I was being wheeled into the operating room of a Swiss hospital, a few words suddenly went through my head: Exile, your former island, lets you go. I have always been curious what I would think before losing consciousness, and when I came to, this time, after my knee operation, the strange words were still there, still in the form of a stanza, and soon other words began to appear as well. I realized at once what was happening, and asked my wife for a piece of paper and something firm to write against. And so began ""The Turning of the Tide"", a poem I wrote ""upside down"" on my back from my bed in the hospital. The poem turned out to be an announcement, to myself, of a homecoming, both in space and in time, to the town where I had come of age during what is still called the Vietnam War, though it was not ever officially a war. I had scheduled the operation early enough so that I would be able to walk once more along the edge of the Sound where, as a young man, I had wandered alone and often at night trying to come to terms with the world before me. As a boy I had learned that a word, like a country, has a history of its own, and I had mistakenly derived ""exile"" from the French of ""ex"" and ""île"" and falsely arrived at my ""former island""; and now, freed of falsehood, here was the word again, in a new yet familiar context. I realized that I had a start on the book that would bring the two continents - the two tectonic plates of my life - back together, in space and time. Other poems began to appear, some even before I had returned to my old hometown, stepping stones of a sort, and what I now had to do, I saw, was to put the separate stones together, to make, in other words, a breakwater rock of my own, something open to everyone, protective and inviting, entrance and exit at once.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bruce Lawder
Publisher:   Homestead Lighthouse Press
Imprint:   Homestead Lighthouse Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 0.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.118kg
ISBN:  

9781950475421


ISBN 10:   1950475425
Pages:   80
Publication Date:   15 May 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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