Editorial Reviews Review “You’ve never read a book like this one, with such heart and such grace. Adam Mansbach unpacks a kind of loss most of us will never experience, and builds something at once majestic and intimate: a tribute, a totem, a life.”—Daniel Alarcón, author of The King Is Always Above the People“Poetry has always been the perfect vehicle for the unwieldy, intractable narrative—the pulsing injustice that refuses to dim, the love that swells unchecked, the numbing tragedy that bleeds past its borders. In I Had a Brother Once—Adam Mansbach’s penetrative chronicle of his younger brother’s suicide—there is an almost unbearable tension between an unrelenting poetic structure that just barely the contains the unthinkable and the exhaustive emotional range of the poem itself. I remember Adam around the time of his brother’s death—if there’s a top of the world, he was on top of that—and it’s sobering to now realize the grief he was shouldering, how vehemently that perfect world had shifted. I Had a Brother Once humbly touts itself as ‘A Poem,’ but it is so, so much more than that. It is a love story, an unbridled wail, an effectual and resounding clash of heartache and art.”—Patricia Smith, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Incendiary Art“This is a devastating, brilliant book. Somehow, in its completely authentic pain, it manages also to be full of life, at times even sweetly funny, maybe because we see struggles we recognize: of distance, of authenticity, of parenting, of performance, of love. This book feels deeply necessary, not just for the writer, but for all of us.”—Matthew Zapruder, author of Why Poetry and Father’s Day“I Had a Brother Once is a brave, heartrending, and compelling book. It is consoling with no false notes, rich in both texture and feeling. Adam Mansbach has written a remarkable memoir.”—Rabih Alameddine, artist and author of An Unnecessary Woman and The Angel of History“A piercing poetic meditation on death, grief, and family . . . A wounded though loving paean that will speak to anyone who has lost a sibling, no matter the cause of death.”—Kirkus Reviews“In this heartbreaking, brutally candid memoir, Mansbach employs long stanzas of free verse to recount events surrounding his brother's death, struggling through anger, sorrow, and confusion. Poetic conventions allow him to retreat into form, to distill the endless refrains of condolence in a way that re-creates the time grief occupies in tragedy’s immediate aftermath. . . . For an author who has written everything from screenplays to middle-grade novels to wildly popular picture books, this courageous and devastating memoir in verse stands out.”—Booklist (starred review) About the Author Adam Mansbach is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep, the novels Rage Is Back, Angry Black White Boy, and The End of the Jews (winner of the California Book Award), and a dozen other books, most recently the bestselling A Field Guide to the Jewish People, co-written with Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Mansbach wrote the award-winning screenplay for the Netflix Original Barry, and his next feature film, Super High, starring Andy Samberg, Craig Robinson, and Common, is forthcoming from New Line. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Believer, and The Guardian and on This American Life, The Moth, and All Things Considered. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. first of all i neverusually stayed out pastmidnight or even ten,but i was feelingmyself that night.something was ending& it was time to celebrate. my friend emery had reserved the back roomof a center city loungeso we could spin somerecords for the first &final time before ipacked up the rentedcarriage house &u-hauled out of town.  one year in philly hadsprawled into two &i’d been digging weeklythat whole timeat this spot called beautifulworld & another calledmilkcrate, plus mark’sspot, which didn’t havea name, & then there wasanother out past bryn mawrthat i found by accident,a place the local deejayshad long written offas trash, except i happenedto fall through just asa new collection came upfrom the basement, had noteven been filed yet, allholy grail joints--the deljones record, a mintoriginal headless heroesof the apocalypse lp,the bo diddley with thebreak, the rhetta hughes,the johnny houston, someforty pieces & nothingstickered past eight bucks.it’s bound to happen ifyou dig long & doggedlyenough, but only aboutonce per decade. my last twohad been waterville mainein ninety-six & the jamaicanlady i met outside academyrecords in manhattan doubleparked on twelfth street,truck sagging with rootsreggae. there were two guysworking that day, a baldheaded whiteboy & a dread,& the wrong one jogged out.he took a quick flip through& passed. i slid up & i askedif i could look, ended upjumping in the shotgun seat& driving back up to the bronxto see what she had left at home.that was two thousand twoor possibly oh-three& now it was may twenty-eighttwo thousand eleven. i’damassed two crates, one foreach year of my expiringuniversity appointment, &barely listened to a lot of itmyself; all i had at the housewas a portable turntable emeryhad let me hold, & all mythree year old wanted to hearwas the dixie cups crooningabout their trip to the chapelof love, maybe because hermother & i were notmarried ourselves.i had not spun outsince leaving california, &music always sounds differentwhen you are rocking for a room, studying the wayeach song hits. deejayingis the art of making peoplehear what you do. eachrecord transforms the crowd& each crowd the record.  i invited my grad students& most of them came. itwas a small mfa program,tightknit, with little of thepettiness or gamesmanshipi recalled from my own.after workshop we oftenwent for drinks, a motorcadeof hatchbacks & tin canscruising four blocks to thetavern near campus becausewalking even that far wasconsidered foolhardy incamden at night. one barfor an entire university wasone too few, meant i riskedseeing my undergradsdrunk, but it was no worsethan running into them whilei was lifting weights at theschool gym, & for the mostpart we were all adept atnot getting in each other’sway, like housemates sharinga kitchen.  somebody took a flickof me behind the wheelsthat night, probably leslie.my left hand is pressedto the wax, fingertipsbackcuing the funkylittle drumfill at the topof hit or miss, right handa jutting peace sign,elbow cocked, arms tan,emery grinning beside me.that was one of the lastrecords i played, whichmeans it was about twelvethirty & might even be afterthe first call from my father,the one i ignored, straightcognitive dissonance, therewas no earthly reasonhe would call that late &i was in the middle ofmy set, no one was sickor frail, my last livinggrandparent was alreadydead. i told myselfhe must have dialed bymistake in his car, homebound from the newspaperafter writing the first headlinethe greater boston area wouldsee tomorrow when they freedthe globe from its plasticsheath, tipped their coffeemugs mouthward, destroyedthe symmetry of their donuts.but five minutes laterhe called again & this time ipicked up, cupping a palmover my open ear to blunt the funk booming behind.i still didn’t think anythingwas wrong. in fact, i rememberor think i remember beingslightly annoyed, in the beliefthat this call was a frivolousintrusion, which makesso little sense that perhapsi knew better & was frightenedenough to erect this cardboardbuttress.  my father saidi’ve put this off aslong as possiblethat’s not what he said. i mean me. i would livehere in this preambleforever. rework it. fold innew ingredients. knead ittill the gluten breaks. yammeron about records. tell somejokes. have i mentionedthat on this night & forthe six weeks beforehanda book i had written thatdid not yet technically exist,could not be held in hands tilljune, was somehow outsellingevery other book in the world?there was almost certainlya split second when iconvinced myself my fatherwas calling about that,jubilant with some newtidbit that had dropped into hisnewsroom off the a.p.wire, additional victimsclaimed by this viral sensationof mine. we could talk aboutthe book. i could tell youa few stories about stories,flip a little wordplay, we couldwarm up with some improvgames. it has been eightf***ing years & i have writteneverything but this.my father saiddavid has taken his own life& i answered as if i didn’tunderstand or hadn’t heard.my reply was what? & herepeated it. there is plentyto regret & perhaps thisis insignificant but i wishi had not made himsay it to me twice. 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