Survivor`s Notebook – Poems

"O’Brien’s Survivor’s Notebook is a beautiful little hybrid book that calls itself poetry, though the paragraph-length entries inside are more memoir. . . .This is a very honest work. There are personal phobias and fears, secrets and longings exposed. . . . Part celebration, part extrication, fans of personal stories about imperfect lives will enjoy this brave and bittersweet book." -- Jesi Bender * Exacting Clam *
"Earlier this season, Acre Books released Dan O’Brien’s Survivor’s Notebook, a visceral collection of prose poems. In wielding the tools of memoir, O’Brien illuminates the traumas and triumphs of two cancer survivors to profound effect. This complement to O’Brien’s 2021 collection Our Cancers is as inspiring as it is skilled." * New England Review *
"The playwright and poet lays bare the bones of his life, giving us entrance to the reality of his struggles in the space of a few perfectly chosen words." * America Magazine *
“[A] deeply compelling portrait of life as a cancer survivor . . . beautiful in its sonic richness. . . . Like the Old Masters, [O’Brien] understands how our human songs are ‘made melodic with pain.’” * Plume Poetry *
"In Survivor’s Notebook, through the more flowing, capacious prose poem, there is more an expansive mood of intensive searching, and, often, an onward rush of packed mental busyness and racing novelistic flights. . . .  The prose poem is a good choice for [O'Brien's] roaming quest, as it allows him to channel free-flowing, often turbulent, thoughts and feelings. Rather than a sense of completeness to each piece, the reading sensation is more in medias res throughout. . . . Each lucid fragment is a part of the whole shattered mosaic of restless living." * Wild Court *
“Our Cancers is an excellent example of Shelley’s secret alchemy, which turns ‘to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life.’ . . . Writing the truth, [O’Brien] says, ‘saved him.’ And it has produced an exquisite and terrible beauty in these pages.” -- Praise for 'Our Cancers' * Stephen Wilson, Times Literary Supplement *
“O’Brien explains that his obligation as a writer is ‘To tell others the truth, as skillfully as possible. To make art out of pain. To heal.’ Our Cancers tells his truth not only skillfully but masterfully, making from pain a lasting chronicle of art that traces fragmentary moments of healing over time.” -- Praise for 'Our Cancers' * J. D. Schraffenberger, North American Review *
“These are sparse and beautiful poems to live by.” -- Praise for 'Our Cancers' * Sophie Thomas, Magma Poetry *
“A master class in surviving through art.” -- Praise for 'A Story That Happens' * Margaret Gray, Los Angeles Times *
“Powerful. . . . This is a book for our times.” -- Praise for 'A Story That Happens' * Alice Jolly, Times Literary Supplement *