Abnormal Brain Sonnets

In James Whale’s 1931 film Frankenstein, the doctors clumsy assistant, Fritz, reaches for the jar marked Normal Brain. When he drops that one, he turns to the jar marked Abnormal Brain. In Abnormal Brain Sonnets, Griffin Prize-winning poet David W. McFadden, now in his sixth decade of writing, reaches once again for the jar labelled Sonnets to probe the world around him and the world within him. With humour and poignancy, and a gently philosophical voice, McFadden reaches into his own past to rescue the images and formative influences that have guided his life and thought. He touches, too, on his own diminishing memory and struggle with language resulting from the onset of logopenic aphasia. This lively, unpredictable collection of sonnets concludes with a 2005 author interview by friend and editor Stuart Ross that explores McFadden’s writing life and the role of the poet.