I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BE OKAY by Peter E. Murphy

Peter E. Murphy is the author of Stubborn Child(Jane Street Press, 2005), a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize, and four chapbooks. His unique poetry writing assignments have been collected in Challenges for the Delusional (Jane Street Press, 2012). His poetry and prose have appeared in The Common, Green Mountains Review, Guernica, The Journal, The Literary Review, The New Welsh Reader, Rattle, Rhino and elsewhere. He is the founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University which sponsors the annual Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and other programs for poets, writers and teachers in the U.S. and abroad.

 

Peter Murphy is a maker of combinatory perceptions and the source of a voice that can sing more than a single note at a time—nothing encoded here, nothing esoteric, but poems that set new standards for clarity, a dark hilarity, and sting, all delivered seamlessly. He is a poet ​of remarkably keen abilities, generous intellect, and humanity. And, yes, when the Murphy-knife is thrust, you’ll gasp, but, then, once it’s twisted, you’ll most likely get to laugh before you cry.
—Renee Ashley

 

As a professor of gerontology, a chair in education and aging, and an expert in cognitive change with age, I know that science is a slow path to understanding. Poetry is much faster. Peter Murphy writes about the fragilities of health, love, material possessions, the expectation that there is fairness and justice, and that we will experience happiness. His poems will break your heart and make you laugh, often simultaneously, as you feel his despair and his marvelous sense of the absurdity of it all.
—Elizabeth Zelinski