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Douglas Kearney’s new book of poetry, Patter, is not something you pick up casually. It demands a lot from its audience — one reviewer the book’s readers must be “agile, adaptive, vigilant and tough.”
But the payoff is worth it. Kearney takes his readers into an extremely private struggle, shared with his wife: their attempt to conceive a child. The poems trace a journey through infertility, miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and, finally, fatherhood.
The book’s acknowledgements include an unusual note: “Thank you to the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, whose generous award paid for the IVF procedure that made much of this book possible,” Kearney writes.
“We literally paid for the procedure with some of this prize money. You know, A lot of prizes and grants that artists and writers can receive, you actually have to produce something,” Kearney tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “Not necessarily a child — or, in our case, two. But I wanted to acknowledge that here.”
Kearney and his wife spent eight years trying to conceive before they tried IVF; now, they’re the parents of twins. The poet tells Martin about the emotionally complicated process of achieving fatherhood, and the heartbreaks along the way.
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