Heartbroken by divorce, a man falls in love again. Then the woman announces she is pregnant. She wants the child. He wants his freedom back.
What follows is neither a political tract nor a conventional book of poems, but a gripping narrative told in verse-a psychological journey through fear, anger, guilt, desire, philosophy, religion, family law, and finally, acceptance.
Written with wit, candor, and emotional intensity, Old Pennies gives voice to a perspective rarely heard in literature: that of a man confronting unwanted fatherhood while struggling to reconcile his own hopes, convictions, and future. Friends, lawyers, therapists, lovers, relatives, and strangers all offer advice, until every certainty is challenged.
The poems move from biting satire to tenderness, from courtroom logic to lyric meditation, from fierce argument to moments of unexpected beauty. Together they form a story-a novel in verse-that asks difficult questions without pretending there are easy answers.
The opening pages contain some of the angriest verses in the book. They were written in the midst of a personal crisis. But this is ultimately not a book about anger. It is a book about what survives after anger has burned itself away: compassion, forgiveness, and the mysterious bond between parent and child.
Whether your sympathies lie with the father, the mother, both, or neither, Old Pennies invites you into one of life's most intimate moral dilemmas-and leaves you to decide.
