The Jaguar is an intimate book, dwelling in the borderlands between life and death where my father spent his final days and hours of Parkinson’s Disease. Sitting beside my father’s hospital bed, the world was never more ordinary, never more small – yet at the same time, I was aware I was witnessing the most mysterious transformation of a human life. My book is an attempt to find a language for that final horizon of our imagining – and to think about the act of dying, which we so often resist, yet is the most universal of experiences, the last thing we will all ever do.
As these poems took shape, I found myself wondering more than once whether The Jaguar would be a book that anyone would want to read. It’s been moving beyond words to see it find the readers it has, and to know it has offered some solace to others who’ve had the privilege of caring for loved ones in old age or vulnerability.
