Oberman weaves in passages from his own deceased father's unpublished memoir to engage with the mysterious drowning of his eldest brother, Joshua, at age two, a tragedy that cast a shadow over his childhood. He depicts his own youth and parenthood in the context of his father's trauma, employing queer and trans theory and experimental poetic forms to challenge and expand discourse around fatherhood and masculinity. Oberman moves beyond an attempt to solve the mystery of Joshua's death and interrogates how much we can ever know about our forebears or understand their impacts on our lives. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS offers a necessary intervention into the well-worn terrain of fatherhood/boyhood memoir and functions as a living elegy, communicating with the past, the dead, and the unknowable while speaking to the possibilities for healing intergenerational trauma.
Miller Oberman is the author of IMPOSSIBLE THINGS, _forthcoming from Duke University Press, 2024 and THE UNSTILL ONES, Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017. His awards include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Prize, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and _Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry and Poem-a-Day.
Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes visual-literary collaborations and serves on the board of Brooklyn Poets. He teaches writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School. Miller is a trans Jewish anti-Zionist who lives with his family in Queens, New York.
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