Terminal Surreal

Poems
This unflinching poetry collection follows the authors diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

In her masterful poetry collection Terminal Surreal, Martha Silano confronts the reality of mortality with gorgeous attention to imagery and scene. The book follows a trajectory from early symptoms before diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to full-blown illness and its effects on friends and family, including her children, who appear in poems like After Dropping My Son Off at College and My Nineteen-Year-Old Daughter Is My Personal Assistant.

With a devoted naturalists eye, Silano revels in birds, trees, and flowers in a way that reminds readers we are connected to the world around us. The book touches on the medical, the metaphysical, and even the cosmological (through encounters in medical offices and on a moon of Mars). With Nutter Butters and Lorna Doones, abecedarians and sel