Vernon Rowe is a neurologist who loves a challenge, whether it is navigating a plane or helicopter through bad weather, understanding what is beneath the first telling of his patients' stories, or conveying to his readers these moments in intense and spare writing.
This Reader offers a selection of first-person narratives of various kinds of "rides" and interactions, followed by a selection of poems that are "gem-like" in their faceted luminosity. Also included here are stories emanating from a curious imagination, introducing robotic characters, a "mad scientist" who loses himself in his experiments, and mysterious mergings of identities.
"Vernon Rowe's The Ride takes the reader by foot, by plane, by horse, and by helicopter into the heart of a healer and confronts his uncertainty, explores his pain. and celebrates the human condition. Dr. Rowe, a neurologist by trade, reveals himself to be a doctor of the heart as well. When he looks at an MRI of a poet's brain he see 'not even a single syllable of one tiny poem,' but when he listens to his patients' stories, or looks within himself, he discovers a world beyond the scan, a realm where people can experience a connection 'so strong it can heal. Like love.' In Rowe's poems and stories, less is more. Gem-like poems and spare, uncluttered stories demonstrate the epower of this fine writer. This book is a ride I encourage you to take."--Jack Coulehan, M.D., M.P.H., author of Medicine Stone
"Readers of The Ride will find no wasted words and no unearned emotion in these stories and poems. Dr. Vernon Rowe can turn even prose narrative into a moment of poetry..." --Robert Stewart, editor, New Letters
