Thou Art That

In Thou Art That Matthew Leavitt Brown offers lyrical insights into the complicated ways memory shapes us before, during, and after terminal illness. Through a braided network of individual and disembodied voices, Brown exemplifies a sense of how time, loss, and grief comingle to form a new presence that comes to both fill and haunt the void left by the death of a loved one. Written during the long-term illness and passing of several of his immediate family members, as well as during a prolonged illness of his own, these poems capture something important about the spiritual alienation and search for purpose that necessarily accompany our collective condition of human frailty.