Midflight

A posthumous collection, Midflight collects the poems written by beloved science editor and journalist David Corcoran in the latter part of his life. Idling in a space between the pastoral and the ordinary, Corcoran’s lyrical world maps the sublime mundanity of nature while exploring memory, dreams, and consciousness itself. Corcoran’s lines abound with figures living and long deceased, with the dead walking onstage as if they never left. Describing the accident that killed his father when he was a toddler in “Here,” Corcoran writes, “the door [opens] in midflight / and [pitches] him out.” In “Last Questions,” he asks, “Are you my brother or / a mockingbird?” While these haunting, vivid poems have an aching prescience, imbued as they are with the awareness of human ephemerality, the gift they proffer, to the writer and the reader at once, is the sense of finding oneself midflight, in midair, betwixt sky and ground, in the free fall of being—going and going and never gone.

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Midflight

A posthumous collection, Midflight collects the poems written by beloved science editor and journalist David Corcoran in the latter part of his life. Idling in a space between the pastoral and the ordinary, Corcoran’s lyrical world maps the sublime mundanity of nature while exploring memory, dreams, and consciousness itself. Corcoran’s lines abound with figures living and long deceased, with the dead walking onstage as if they never left. Describing the accident that killed his father when he was a toddler in “Here,” Corcoran writes, “the door [opens] in midflight / and [pitches] him out.” In “Last Questions,” he asks, “Are you my brother or / a mockingbird?” While these haunting, vivid poems have an aching prescience, imbued as they are with the awareness of human ephemerality, the gift they proffer, to the writer and the reader at once, is the sense of finding oneself midflight, in midair, betwixt sky and ground, in the free fall of being—going and going and never gone.

9.99 In Stock
Midflight

Midflight

by David Corcoran
Midflight

Midflight

by David Corcoran

eBook

$9.99 

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Overview

A posthumous collection, Midflight collects the poems written by beloved science editor and journalist David Corcoran in the latter part of his life. Idling in a space between the pastoral and the ordinary, Corcoran’s lyrical world maps the sublime mundanity of nature while exploring memory, dreams, and consciousness itself. Corcoran’s lines abound with figures living and long deceased, with the dead walking onstage as if they never left. Describing the accident that killed his father when he was a toddler in “Here,” Corcoran writes, “the door [opens] in midflight / and [pitches] him out.” In “Last Questions,” he asks, “Are you my brother or / a mockingbird?” While these haunting, vivid poems have an aching prescience, imbued as they are with the awareness of human ephemerality, the gift they proffer, to the writer and the reader at once, is the sense of finding oneself midflight, in midair, betwixt sky and ground, in the free fall of being—going and going and never gone.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781954245181
Publisher: Four Way Books
Publication date: 02/15/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 80
File size: 827 KB

About the Author

David Corcoran was born in New York City in 1947 and was raised in nearby Rockland County. A lifelong journalist, he began his career as a boy, covering sports at the local paper. He attended Amherst College and continued in newspapers, ultimately working as a writer and editor at The New York Times, where he retired as editor of the weekly section, Science Times. His poems have appeared in The Adirondack Review, Barrow Street, Fovea, and Podium. David Corcoran died in 2019. This is his first book.

Read an Excerpt

"When You Die They'll Autopsy Your Brain" 

In one quadrant: whiskers, insect husks,
syringes, wet ashes. In the second:
an illuminated alphabet—Apollo,
Bathysphere, Chaos, &c. The third,
your parents, shrunken & mummified,
hair & fingers eerily lifelike. And finally
a newborn, radiant as alabaster,
fragile as eggshell, who you are.

Table of Contents

The Lake 5

Alone 8

Timothy 9

Night of the Opossum 10

Physical 11

Midway 12

Civilization 14

Puffball 15

A Visit From My Brother 16

When You Die They'll Autopsy Your Brain 17

Little Nemo in Slumberland 18

Anthony 20

The Stepparents' Book 21

People You Knew Before You Were Born 22

Trylon & Perisphere 23

Somnia 24

Later That Night 25

Three Addresses 27

Even Now 30

The Children's Castle 32

The Knife 34

Before You Go 35

Hello, David 36

Birthday Cards 38

Three Nights 39

Colorless 41

Water Music 43

Scissors 44

The Fall 45

Microfilm 47

For Good 48

Island's End 49

Sleeping Through Irene 51

Greenwood 52

Last Questions 53

January 55

Nighttown 56

Real Estate 57

Room, Road, River, Rain 59

Cold 62

Therapy 63

Last Night 64

To Ruth 65

Here 66

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