Saying the World

Peter Pereira

Saying the World reflects Peter Pereira’s experience as a physician to the urban poor—including refugees, immigrants, and the elderly—at High Point Community Clinic in Seattle. The poems also explore his complex background, including a sister’s death, family relationships, and life as a childless gay man.
 
In honoring Peter Pereira with the Hayden Carruth Award, Gregory Orr and Sam Hamill wrote: “Pereira has a magic touch like that of William Carlos Williams: the ability to be a doctor and poet simultaneously, and to make it all so simply, deeply and translucently human that the poems seem absolutely inevitable.”

ISBN: 9781556591976

Format: Paperback

Take Care

Take care, we say to one another,
on parting, as if the cargo
we carried were fragile
or dangerous—chipped
bottle of nitro, crystal
blue robin’s egg, last ampule
of the healing serum.

About the Author

Peter Pereira is a family physician in Seattle and was a founding editor of Floating Bridge Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Journal of the American Medical Association, and have been anthologized in 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, The Best American Poetry, and Eat This Poem: A Literary Feast of Recipes Inspired by Poetry. Pereira’s work has also been featured online at Verse Daily and Poetry Daily, as well …

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Reviews

Saying the World is a heart-wrenching but lovely collection that describes three worlds of Dr. Peter Pereira: the world of medical professionals amid the urban poor, the world of childhood and the loss of a younger sister, and the world of a contemporary gay man living in the Northwest. A moving and thoughtful book, Saying the World rewards the reader with insights into the precariousness and astounding wonder of each human life.” —New Pages