{"product_id":"breakwater-rock-9781950475421-new","title":"Breakwater Rock","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor 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: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eExile, \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eyour former island, \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elets you go.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 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 \"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"INDEPENDENT CAT","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":51545266684194,"sku":"9781950475421-new","price":21.15,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9781950475421.jpg?v=1776420681","url":"https:\/\/www.albakireads.com\/products\/breakwater-rock-9781950475421-new","provider":"AlbakiReads","version":"1.0","type":"link"}