by LAREIGN WARD, Press Argus-Courier Staff Wednesday, July 9, 2008 10:03 AM CDT
A Van Buren poet and schoolteacher will sign copies of his book at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at First Baptist Church of Van Buren.
J. Andrew Lockhart, 42, wrote "Tangled in Wisteria" after suffering a debilitating stroke at age 30. After the intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke, his heart stopped twice and he developed pneumonia and other complications.
"It's not a real common (type of stroke)," Lockhart said in a telephone interview Monday morning. "And about 10 to 15 percent of people who have it live, but if you do live you've got a better chance at a lot of things," including recovery.
Lockhart was sent to Baylor Rehabilitation Hospital in Dallas for intensive rehabilitation therapy, but he remembers nothing of the weeks he spent there.
"It really wiped me out," he said. "I don't even remember most of that whole first year (after the stroke)."
He continued his recovery, and while he'd previously worked as an attorney and partnered with his father to run a tax business, he soon found himself drawn to teaching. Always a music lover, in 2003 he passed the necessary tests to become a certified music teacher and currently teaches at Rena Elementary.
His stroke forced him to relearn how to write and read, and after that, he decided to revisit his love of creative writing that had been with him from an early age. He discovered the Japanese forms of poetry called haiku and tanka, which traditionally have a specific number of syllables per line. A more modern method "looks for the least amount of syllables rather than a specific amount of syllables," he writes in the introduction to his book. Lockhart writes in both styles and says the brevity of the form was a big attraction for him.
"I write fast. I don't have a problem with speed," Lockhart said. "But reading is real slow and my vision is a little strange. I see double sometimes; I've got a big blank spot, a blind spot."
Lockhart and his wife, Toni, have three children ranging from 1 to 13 years old. In addition to his family and the doctors who treated him, he also credits his religious faith for helping him recover from the stroke.
