A writer's response to diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer, the pieces making up this verse journal are best described as spoken songs. Often, these are songs of refusal to go under, to surrender to the undertow of the disease. Songs of newly discovered yearning, courage and awe. There is no discounting the pain and suffering in the process, but as many ?victims? of cancer experience, there can also be a heightening, a vividness and intensity of perception, a kind of awakening.