The Body the Distance Traveled - Poems

With a masterful use of prosody, ekphrasis, and sound, this collection shares a fragmented narrative that reflects the noisy, fractured world we live in.

The Body the Distance Traveled is told in three parts, all fragments of a narrative. The first part uses stories, classical tropes, and ekphrasis to uncover the resonant potential that resides in individual words. The second part explores complex family relationships by yoking together childhood trauma and the responsibility of caring for an elderly parent who may or may not be part of that trauma. In the third part, Kevorkian meditates on the grief of memory, using sound and fragment to disrupt the expectations of traditional narrative. These poems engage with history, art, and art history, as well as the ordinary, asserting that the lives we all live are made of what comes at us in pieces and waves, what’s remembered or known, physically experienced, and viscerally remembered.