In his new memoir “Happy,” Lemon, a poet with two published collections and a lecturer in TCU’s department of English, chronicles his college days as a baseball catcher who suffers a brain aneurism, forcing him to face a number of issues, including depression, drug abuse and childhood sexual abuse. The book is winning rave reviews. Nick Flynn of Esquire magazine writes: “In the world of poetry, as hermetic as it is elusive, Lemon, now 31, is already a star. In three books in almost as many years, he has staked out his own frontier — the land of the ridiculously sublime, a country that is at the same time both wildly playful and deeply felt. “Happy” introduces him to the rest of us.”

The book opens with a graphic description of your first stroke. How hard was it to remember and recount the often-painful episodes of your past?
It was much harder than I expected it to be. I knew it was going to be a challenge to, in many ways, relive much of that stuff. But to push beyond simply remembering and try to understand it in a writerly/artistic way, too—well, reaching that depth of perception felt like I was reliving each moment thousands of different times.

“Happy” deals with so many subjects — drugs, depression, masculinity, the relationship between a mother and son. What has been the reaction from readers so far?
For the most part, the reaction has been incredibly positive. Critically, it’s been received and reviewed well. There are readers that find some of the rawness/explicitness offensive or not to their liking — which is fine, because I made those choices purposefully and understood that would happen. Of the many of readers that have come up to me at readings, or written or called, I’ve been most moved by two kinds: parents of young men who are going through or have been through hard times, and young men and women who have been through similar things — medical trauma, mental illness, surviving sexual abuse — and say the book spoke to them. That makes it all worth it.

You really credit your mother with saving your life, how did she inspire you?
My mother raised me by herself — and did an extraordinary job — while staying true to her beliefs. She is artistic, compassionate, amazingly smart and one of the funniest people I know. In many ways I couldn’t appreciate all she did to raise me until after she helped me after my brain surgery. But it is piercingly clear now. She not only helped me want to go on when I was hopeless because of my medical condition, but beyond that, she shaped nearly every aspect of how I live.

How have you liked being at TCU? What are you teaching this semester?
I love TCU — my wife (assistant professor Ariane Balizet) and I feel very lucky to be here. I have wonderful colleagues in the English Department, and we have some pretty brilliant and creative students here. This semester I’m teaching the Creative Non-Fiction Workshop, and two sections of Intro to Creative Writing.

What are you working on now?
My third collection of poems, Fancy Beasts, will be published in March. I’m collecting my essays into a book, working on a book-length poetic sequence that’s in dialogue with Emerson’s essay “Beauty,” and two longer prose projects.

You’re working on another memoir. What will it cover?
It deals with many of the same issues as Happy — masculinity, mental illness, how one navigates the world with disability, familial relationships — but does so with the insight that a decade brings. Moving beyond those themes, it has to do with the idea of fatherhood and how the recovery of the body is an endless process.

On the Web:
www.alexlemon.com