Marriage Map

By Owen Lewis

Marriage Map is not the usual love story. This poetry collection begins with a meeting recounted in two poems, “The Day the Crane Fell” and “Broadway and 8th,” and ends with a poem evoking a Chagall-like, Klezmer-filled marriage. The protagonists are not young lovers with their life stories yet to unfold, though much still lies ahead for them. Poems map the space between meeting and marriage: how the lovers learn to listen to each other and hear the voices of family, past lovers, divorce and death and discover what is genuine and enduring. Owen Lewis, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he teaches with the narrative medicine group, received the 2016 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, among numerous other awards. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Best Man, Sometimes Full of Daylight and March in San Miguel.