The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle

These free-verse poems relate the story of Tom Andrew's recovery in hospital after slipping on an icy sidewalk, fracturing several bones and filling his frozen joints with blood--a condition we doctors call "hemarthrosis," an excrutiating state almost unique to hemophiliacs. Transported by the alternate deliria of pain and his morphine, Tom regards his existence from a distance while visiting with his constant companions: physical agony, God, and lyrical verse. The poems also help us understand the life of a man who watched his older brother succumb at an early age to the same disease, but who would not let it kill his spirit. (The title refers to his days as a teenage motocross rider, who would infuse himself with clotting factors to allow him not to die from minor injuries while racing his bike wearing a jersey emblazoned with the slogan "Powered by Christ.") The piece "Praying With George Herbert In Late Winter" will touch the heart of any reader who has survived a dark period of their life through the succor of poetry. Tom's religious faith is not lambent, but hard-bitten: "I can say there is a larger something inside me./ I can say, 'Gratitude/ is a strange country.'/But what/ would I give/ to live there?" As someone with little stock in organized Christianity, I found Tom Andrews compelling and ferocious. I first read his poems in 1996 and they have stayed in my heart ever since.

Poet Tom Andrews, (whom I once had for a professor), is intent of living life to the fullest in spite of having hemophilia. The part about how he avoided contracting AIDS, but avoided doing so were really scary, as they must have been for him. Even though this is his first book not strictly of poetry, again Andrews demonstrates his ability to draw poetical inspiration from such things as lying in a hospital bed with a severe joint bleed. In spite of what a review in Entertainment Weekly said, the final chapter, in which he tell how hemophilia has affected him personnally is the most powerful section of the book.