The Attending

Matthew Mumber writes in a long tradition of physician-poets, from Whitman to Keats to William Carlos Williams, exhibiting acute attention to the body: its musculature, its sinews, the head, the heart. Mumber underscores the practice central to this knowledge, an 'Attending' that is as much a listening and a waiting as it is an act of care.

Matthew Mumber writes in a long tradition of physician-poets, from Whitman to Keats to, more recently, William Carlos Williams. Like these earlier models, Mumber exhibits acute attention to the body: its musculature, its sinews. The head, the heart. But more than his predecessors, Mumber underscores the practice central to this knowledge, an 'Attending' that is as much a listening and a waiting as it is an act of care. What's more, Mumber extends these various, if difficult modes of attention to objects in the natural world, portraying flora, fauna, and the land itself with the same care he directs toward the patients under his charge. The poems in this remarkable collection thus attend in various senses of that word: they are conflicted and inclusive, vulnerable and precise--sharp as a surgeon's knife.

"To attend: 'to direct one's mind or energies.' Mumber's vocation as an attending physician, a spiritual seeker, a family man, and an engaged citizen of the world receives the fullness of his mind and energy in The Attending. We meet the narrator's family, mentors, and patients along the way, but most importantly, the soul of the poet-doctor-seeker who asks, 'Who am I?' and 'How can I serve?' is revealed in these poems."--Pamela Wax, author of Walking the Labyrinth and Starter Mothers

"Over every poem in The Attending, grace--and more specifically, the grace of amazement--presides like a sovereign angel. Birth transpires in a glow of amazement; death overwhelms the confines of self with gracious wonderment. Matthew Mumber has forwarded a courage and energy to our moment more familiar to readers of Blake and of Traherne than to us beleaguered contemporaries. I can actually sense a glory in even the most quiet passages of this beautiful book. Mumber has accomplished something truly rare and fine."--Donald Revell, author of The English Boat and Drought-Adapted Vine

"In Matthew Mumber's The Attending, the spiritual and corporeal collide immediately. 'Nothing rhymes with your brain metastases, ' we are reminded, yet a bell keeps ringing, the wind keeps speaking, drawing us back from the body only as body. Mumber reminds us that many of our finest poets were and are physicians."--Kyle McCord, author of Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult

"Matthew Mumber writes in a long tradition of physician-poets, from Whitman to Keats to, more recently, William Carlos Williams. Like these earlier models, Mumber exhibits acute attention to the body: its musculature, its sinews. The head, the heart. But more than his predecessors, Mumber underscores the practice central to this knowledge, an ?Attending' that is as much a listening and a waiting as it is an act of care. What's more, Mumber extends these various, if difficult modes of attention to objects in the natural world, portraying flora, fauna, and the land itself with the same care he directs toward the patients under his charge. The poems in this remarkable collection thus attend in various senses of that word: they are conflicted and inclusive, vulnerable and precise--sharp as a surgeon's knife."--John James, author of The Milk Hours

Poetry.