The Book of Stroke is a collection of poems and commentary about making sense of a life after a stroke. Why poems? Early in my recovery, I couldn't focus on anything longer. It took me many months before I could write my first new word, and not just because the stroke had left me, for a time, without the memory of the logic of keys on a keyboard and without the use of my right hand to type. I simply didn't want to write. Poems fit the overwhelming breadth of my experiences-at times ironic, withering, fantastical, whimsical, narrative, lyrical, funny, deterministic, childlike, and so much of that in pieces that don't fit together. These poems are accessible, without pandering.