All We Are Given We Cannot Hold

by Robert Fanning

All We Are Given We Cannot Hold, Robert Fanning’s fifth collection of poetry, bravely traverses wide vistas of personal and universal terrain, exploring coast and horizon for what holds us and for what we cannot hold. Exploring boundaries of love, identity and desire, of marriage and family, of human compassion and enmity, of what is given to us and what we make, the journey ends with elegies for the poet’s mother, looking through her death toward what in us is boundless, toward where the infinite begins. For fans of Dylan Thomas and Theodore Roethke, this is a lyric collection not to be missed—a core sample from the middle of life, with all of its comings and goings and grievings.

132 pages, Paperback

Published December 9, 2025

About the author

Robert Fanning is the author of five full-length poetry collections: All We Are Given We Cannot Hold (Dzanc Books, 2025), Severance (Salmon Poetry, 2019), Our Sudden Museum (Salmon Poetry, 2017), American Prophet (Marick Press, 2009), and The Seed Thieves (Marick Press, 2006). In addition, he is the author of four chapbooks: The Good Sea (Red Flag Poetry, 2026), Prince of the Air (Seven Kitchens Press, 2024), Sheet Music (Three Bee Press, 2015), and Old Bright Wheel (2002 Ledge Press Poetry Award). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast and other journals. He is a Professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University. He is also the founder and facilitator of the Wellspring Literary Series in Mt. Pleasant, MI.

To read his work, visit www.robertfanning.wordpress.com.

Reviews

[Michael Doane · Rating 5 out of 5]

In All We Are Given We Cannot Hold, Robert Fanning delivers a lyric collection marked by emotional courage and formal grace poems that stand at the crossroads of love and loss, inheritance and impermanence. This fifth collection feels like a reckoning with middle life itself: the weight of what has been chosen, what has been given, and what must eventually be released.

Fanning moves fluidly between the intimate and the expansive, tracing the boundaries of marriage, desire, family, and moral responsibility with a voice that is reflective without becoming self-protective. The poems are alert to the friction between human tenderness and human cruelty, between compassion and enmity, and they never flinch from complexity. There is a deep attentiveness here to the body, to memory, to the ethical stakes of loving others in an unstable world.

The collection’s closing elegies for the poet’s mother are especially affecting. Rather than offering consolation, these poems look steadily into grief and allow it to open outward toward questions of continuity, boundlessness, and where the infinite might begin. Loss becomes not an ending, but a widening.

Stylistically, Fanning’s work carries echoes of Dylan Thomas and Theodore Roethke, yet the voice remains unmistakably his own: lyrical without ornament, muscular without bravado. All We Are Given We Cannot Hold is a book that understands poetry not as possession, but as witness. It is a collection that honors the beauty of holding and the necessity of letting go.

[Janessa Shepard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love and family are at the center of this collection. These poems are relatable for anyone who has filled similar shoes as the author—husband, father, and son. Even those who haven't experienced these life stages can find knowledge bursting from these lines.
The fifth section hit me especially hard. My father passed in December of 2024, and many of the poems spoke directly to the feelings and experiences I had before and after his death. That section contained some of the most powerful poems I've encountered. "I will not rage// or weep. Let memory be heritage,/ your life my carried lamp against the night./ Let all your gentle brightness go with age./ The dying light is gone. You needn't rage" (112).
While I love the heart of this collection, there are some poems, particularly in part 3, that are overly political. There are many strong opinions voiced that don't consider the other side, even calling those with differing opinions monsters at one point.
Overall, the poetry is beautiful and does an amazing job portraying what love looks like in all of its forms: adoration, protectiveness, grief, and so much more.