Ryan Guth

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In this poetic memoir, Ryan Guth explores an old family mystery: the feud, mostly silent, between his father, an aspiring science fiction writer, and his (maternal) grandmother, struggling to keep her husband's funeral home running after his death. These poems - in verse and prose and letters - recreate the essential conflict between the father's desire to write and the pressing need for him to help out with the family business. The central question is the most puzzling: why didn't he return to writing when he could have? Why did he continue to brood over the bitterness of lost opportunities?