{"id":504802,"date":"2021-12-02T09:11:25","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=504802"},"modified":"2022-04-07T10:20:33","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T14:20:33","slug":"forever-poems-james-longenbachs-sixth-collection-504802","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/forever-poems-james-longenbachs-sixth-collection-504802\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortality informs creativity in poet James Longenbach\u2019s latest collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written in the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis, Forever<\/em> is the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ English professor\u2019s sixth book of poems.<\/h2>\n

\"BookJames Longenbach had been reading, writing, and teaching poetry for nearly 40 years when, in January 2016, he received an unexpected diagnosis of incurable kidney cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like the simplest truth in the world, this understanding that our lives are finite,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought I had grappled with that\u2014but turns out I had not.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Longenbach, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English<\/a> at the\u00a0Ä¢¹½´«Ã½<\/a>, poetry generally\u2014and lyric poetry specifically\u2014proved the necessary medium for contemplating mortality in the years after his diagnosis. The result is Forever<\/em> (W. W. Norton), Longenbach\u2019s sixth book of poetry, which was published in June. The collection is divided into three parts, with each part featuring five lyric poems, comparatively short poems<\/a> usually written in the first person that focus on the speaker\u2019s emotions.<\/p>\n

Bisecting the book is a six-part entry titled \u201cIn the Village,\u201d after the short story by Elizabeth Bishop. Intentionally or not, Longenbach replicates for his readers the sensation of being caught off-guard by the unexpected. The first two sections of \u201cIn the Village\u201d showcase the simple words, regular enjambment, multi-line stanzas, intensity of emotion, and first-person perspective that characterize the book so far. But then the third section abruptly shifts to prose poetry with an almost clinical tone:<\/p>\n

After a routine ultrasound revealed a fifteen-centimeter mass, my left kidney was removed robotically on February 12. Fifteen months later, nodules were discovered in my lungs and peritoneum. Two subsequent rounds of therapy failed to impede their growth, so I enrolled in a trial, a treatment not yet FDA approved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI had to write a poem that just named, if briefly, what I was going through in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact way,\u201d Longenbach says. \u201cThat felt scary, and it made me uneasy.\u201d But his unease was overridden by what he describes as a \u201can impulse to take something very ordinary\u201d\u2014in this case, words\u2014\u201cand make something out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creativity in the face of inevitable loss or death animates many of the entries in Forever<\/em>. Several recreate through language the personal experiences of falling and being in love (\u201cTwo People,\u201d \u201cIn the Dolomites\u201d), as well as the fundamentally life-affirming acts of lovemaking, procreating, and childrearing (\u201cSong of the Sun,\u201d \u201cForever\u201d). Other poems explore the mystery and wonder of more commonplace moments of productivity, as when the speaker is making risotto in \u201cThursday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to write a poem that just named, if briefly, what I was going through in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact way.\u201d<\/div>\n

Yet these instances of creation appear alongside images of destruction\u2014a sinking Venice, a burning Notre-Dame, a splintering relic, a metastasizing cancer. That contrast highlights the book\u2019s central concerns with permanence and transience, presence and absence, love and loss.<\/p>\n

But Longenbach also makes those concerns explicit through specific verses (\u201cThe city never changes, it\u2019s never the same.\u201d) and stanzas (\u201cThey\u2019ve never done this before. \/ They\u2019ve done it a thousand times.\u201d) throughout the book. Meanwhile, leitmotifs\u2014including pairs of children, a seaside village, Italian locales and phrases, barking dogs, and Christmastime kisses\u2014simultaneously inspire recognition in the reader while drawing their attention to an artform that relies on language to recreate, represent, or reconstruct its subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe knowledge we derive from our repeated experience of a poem is ultimately the knowledge of our own mortality\u2014the sense not only that we will be but also that we will have been,\u201d Longenbach writes in his latest book of literary criticism, The Lyric Now<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 2020). According to the poet and professor, composing the individual poems and then compiling Forever<\/em> helped him to better appreciate \u201chow the ending of some things makes possible the beginning and the middle of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experiencing the poems in the book will, he hopes, allow his readers to do the same.<\/p>\n

\n

Read more<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
\n

\"blueprintsHow do you make a poem?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Speakers of a language rely on its words to carry out even the most mundane acts of communication. But the same words are poets\u2019 medium of creation. James Longenbach explains how poets turn bare utterance into art.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"PersonPoet James Longenbach explores the ever-current \u2018now\u2019 of lyric poetry<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Writers and musicians are the subject of Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ English professor James Longenbach’s book The Lyric Now<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"illustrationSpare and spooky unite in Earthling<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This fifth collection of poetry from James Longenbach had its roots in a poem he wrote called \u201cPastoral,\u201d which would set the collection’s tone of \u201cfeeling or spiritual development.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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