Sweet Spot Poems

Product Description
In
Sweet Spot, his second collection of poems, Kenneth Lee rings all the changes life has to offer. We are presented with a salmagundi from a life richly lived: a childhood many of us can only envy, a long and delighted marriage, a rewarding work life. But here too is the violence of war (Lee served as a fighter pilot); the sadness of life’s inevitable endings; a grandfather’s realization that youth must inevitably, even if nicely, say “move over” to its elders; and the medical realities faced by the poet in his role as a doctor specializing in pathology. In the end, however, joy triumphs. Lee’s poems often touch on what makes life such a sacrament; he leads us to relish the epiphanies that can grace a dying day, epiphanies such as “the fox / perched on the fender of a pickup truck, / visible in fleeting glimpses / between the veils of snow.”
Review
In
Sweet Spot, the author has articulated a complex and mature vision, a vision which includes family, friends, the past, and an often wry sense of what it means to be a citizen, both of the United States and of the world. These poems both challenge and inspire. What a pleasure to have them gathered together in one book. –Jim Moore

With the same intensely human scrutiny he turns on the tissue slides he evaluates as a pathologist, Kenneth Lee appraises the narrative of his life in these expertly crafted poems. He delivers his verdict on the strange and wonderful chemistry of memory and experience, and the prognosis is hopeful and exhilarating. –Tom Daley
About the Author
Kenneth Lee was born in Teaneck, New Jersey. He served as a pilot flying RF-4C aircraft in Vietnam and elsewhere. Currently he is a pathologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He is the co-author, along with Christopher Crum and Marisa Nucci, of a popular textbook,
Diagnostic Gynecologic and Obstetric Pathology. He lives with his wife, Kathleen, in Boston, Massachusetts.