by Michael Tyrell

These poems are from Tyrell’s manuscript, Wild, which documents the aftermath of an elderly parent’s death, a period marked not only by mourning but dream visitations, recollections of the ups and downs of eldercare, and a reckoning with what it means to be an “endling”–the last of a family line almost like the last of a species. The title uses “wild” as a metaphor for human mortality in the sense that death separates us from civilization, if not from memory.

Michael Tyrell’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Agni, The Best American Poetry, BOMB, Braving the Body, Columbia, the Iowa Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and The Yale Review. With Julia Spicher Kasdorf, he edited the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (NYU Press). He has published three previous books of poems: The Wanted (National Poetry Review Press); Phantom Laundry; and The Arsonist’s Letters (the latter two published by Backlash Press). He teaches writing at New York University, where he is the assistant director of the International Writing Workshops.