Summer Becomes Absurd

poems by Brendan Ogg

$14, paper

paper

Brendan Ogg has been a writer and poet all his life.   Top among his literary influences are John Keats, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Brendan has taken creative writing courses at the University of Michigan, University of Maryland and Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts.  He was majoring in English at the University of Michigan when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor during his sophomore year.  His poetry about his illness first appeared as part of A Leaf of Knowledge: Courage Unmasked, a fundraiser for Head and Neck Cancers, in September 2009.    Brendan died peacefully at his home in Silver Spring, MD on February 24, 2010, having participated in the editing of this volume, and glad to know that his poems would be reaching a wider public soon.

Praise for Summer Becomes Absurd

Poets often find their voices at a surprisingly young age: Think of Keats, of Rimbaud.  Even knowing this, one still pauses with wonder and pleasure while reading Brendan Ogg’s Summer Becomes Absurd.  This is the fully assured work of an already mature poet, one who couples a chaste, understated diction with the most deeply felt emotions—fear, desire, gratitude, joy.  As a result, these autobiographical poems movingly preserve both dark nights of the soul and ecstatic moments of being.  Through them Brendan Ogg lives for us on the page—witty and observant, sympathetic to others, touched by and touching the world.

--Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for The Washington Post

An instant can be a lifetime, and in an instant, life can change. On December 24, 2008 Brendan Ogg, age 19, was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Brendan drew on his gift for writing to create a series of poems that reflect upon what happened after his diagnosis.   His words offer inspiration and insight on a span of time embedded in a moment of his life.

--Francie Hester, visual artist and creator of A Leaf of Knowledge, a collaborative project with Brendan Ogg.

The voice in these poems speaks with the energy of youth and the wisdom of one who has met and acknowledged mortality and knows better than most of us how to embrace and celebrate life.  With an ear attuned to the cadences of modern and Romantic classics, Brendan Ogg’s voice names what is most precious in ordinary life, showing us how to live life whole. 

--Kathleen Henderson Staudt, author of Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life and Annunciations:  Poems out of Scripture.