My Modest Blindness

In his late twenties, poet Russell Brakefield is diagnosed with keratoconus, a degenerative eye condition that causes blurred vision, light sensitivity, and progressive loss of sight. In the years after, his condition worsens. In My Modest Blindness, he traverses this blurry landscape, drawing connections to art, literature, natural history, and pop culture. Part celebration and part lament, this book uses a sustained conversation with Jorge Luis Borges's famous lecture "On Blindness," as well as a "catalogue of delights of the visual world in the moments just before it leaves," to examine what it means to be a writer and a person slowly losing his ability to see.