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ALEX LEMON: When I was 18, I woke up one morning and fell over. My eyes were really out of whack. Everything I saw was bouncing and blurry. I had no balance. My vestibular system, which is my inner-- the function of my inner ear was off.

So my balance, everything was kind of shuddering. And I was knocking into things. And it took a couple of weeks before I found out through an MRI and other medical procedures that I had a vascular malformation in the pons of my brain stem, a cavernoma.

SPEAKER 2: And then surgery.

ALEX LEMON: And then two years later, after two more bleeds or minor strokes, I had to really decide because of my quality of life was growing worse and worse. And the doctors thought that if I continued hemorrhaging that I might not be alive when I'm was 30 years old. So there really wasn't much of a choice for me that I was going to take care of it. And I ended up having brain surgery in September of '99 in Miami.

SPEAKER 2: Some of the images-- and I'm a very squeamish person. I'll admit this up front. But some of the images are rough and in-your-face visceral. And do you think you would write in that way if you hadn't had this experience?

ALEX LEMON: I don't even know if I can answer that. This is the way I write because of who I am, and that I'm trying to say the unsayable, using as much of the language as I can, as much as I know.

And lot of that just seems really out of my control that I'm not choosing rough edged words or violent images. But that that's what becomes that. That's what is, I guess.

SPEAKER 2: A couple of images come up again and again. Can I ask you about them?

ALEX LEMON: Of course. Of course.

SPEAKER 2: They come up through the poems. Lightning. Why lightning?

ALEX LEMON: I think-- that's great. I was actually thinking about this the other day. Lightning, I mean, just the sudden rupture of everything. I mean, it seems like this is a great metaphor for the failure of the body almost.

The suddenness of being 18 years old and feeling-- I mean, invincible or what. I mean, I had chickenpox. I think that was the only time I was sick. I was an athlete. I played sports. And then all of a sudden, there was the complete and utter failing of my body.

And with that same suddenness, it's like all of the sky becoming i illuminated with light that, that shock of lightning and the destruction that can occur and the beauty. It's that the two-sidedness of lightning because it is a beautiful thing. And then your house is burnt down.

SPEAKER 2: The idea of being underwater or people talking underwater, that occurs as well.

ALEX LEMON: That does occur a lot. And I think that, that has to do with another or a number of things, not only with just like the veil of sickness or just being disconnected from the world that I was trying to maneuver around.

So that muffled or like listening to people talk in a different room, that that's the similar thing about being underwater, but also being in a medical fog. And always being unaware of what the real reality and the truth of situations where everything blending together, the oatmeal of existence, I guess.

SPEAKER 2: Another poem I want to focus on. And it has to do with another theme that I find here, birds. And you write poems specifically about birds. But this one called Call Note centers around a bird.

ALEX LEMON: Call Note.

I stopped listening as the blue jay hooked its final turn.

I knew its business was no longer air, only rage.

Good just out of reach.

Jake, my nephew asked questions you hear underwater,

questions answered when a stranger ties your shoes.

We stared together. Everyone's done this,

gazed at an airplane slicing sky

and blossomed with visions of balloons bursting with gasoline.

I held Jake to the glass

bird in slow motion.

I squeezed his tiny hand

in time with smack.

Jake's bobbing head drooled.

The stain was a half finished Rothko.

In the fading light,

the still bird was gray.

I wanted to take the window out

and frame it.

I wanted the delicate bones in my freezer.

I wanted to kiss Jake's soft head and whisper

most days this is the sound of the world.

SPEAKER 2: It's called Call Note. it's from the collection of poems called Mosquito by Alex Lemon who's here with us and on the flyleaf of the book. And I know that I'm getting in dangerous territory here because you don't write the flyleaf. You don't write any of this stuff.

ALEX LEMON: I don't do any-- yeah, that's all Tin House. And they did it-- I mean, it's a beautiful book. I can't complain about any of it.

SPEAKER 2: They talk about your emergence into a world where eroticism, hope, and wisdom allow him to see life in a wholly new way. Is it a little simplistic to say that, that poem is you seeing life in a wholly new way?

ALEX LEMON: I think maybe it's not simplistic, but it's just one example of moving towards that. That yes, there are always occasions for me that it's again, that two-sided like where I feel a definite disconnect from the existence, but it also is a more holistic vision of what's going on.

And that, that it's that double edged, that beauty and beauty and death. The beauty of a bird. The delicateness of its wings. My nephew Jake, a human, a growing human. And a bird dying as it smashes into the window. And all of those thoughts that occur. That nothing we feel is ever really pure. That love is always tinged with a little of something else.

SPEAKER 2: A couple of images of planes exploding or gasoline explosions. And right away we hear those and we think of September 11. Do you make that connection in your mind as well?

ALEX LEMON: Well, in hindsight, Yes. But these poems were written when actually I was an MFA student at the University of Minnesota. A lot of these poems are old. And so, yes, of course. Now, because it's so ingrained, I mean, we've all seen so many images of it. But I think for me at the time of writing this, it's more of the explosiveness of similar to the lightning.

SPEAKER 2: Alex Lemon's new collection of poems is called Mosquito. Thanks for coming in.

ALEX LEMON: Thanks for having me. It's been wonderful.