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The Unbecoming: Poems
A dazzling meditation on the limits of life from a poet whose “mind is endless with depth and truth” (Brenda Shaughnessy).
On a sketch of the Virgin and Child, Michelangelo instructed his young assistant, in shorthand Italian, to Draw faster, acknowledging that life lasts a moment, death—and art—far longer.
As an aging, bi, childless poet currently recognizing the limits of her own life and that of our planet, Kathy Fagan has immersed herself in the intimate and urgent discovery that growth and decay are the same cycle, and that art and memory, made in the tumultuous rush of these, are the deeply human attempts to outlast them.
Fagan’s luminous seventh collection, The Unbecoming, begins with the sequence “Listening to Others,” and a Run, into a process that is, for all of us, a circle of becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. Favoring perspective over nostalgia and clarity over certainty, the poems are, then, memento mori, a loving reminder, a poet’s reckoning with the rewards and losses of age, and with our painfully beautiful little lives “rounded with a sleep.”
From “Listening to Others”:
People used to say, soaking wet, they’d got caught
in the a sudden the pouring rain.
The rain is constant, I wrote in a postcard once,
perhaps from here. I was fifteen, and on the tour bus,
where I could crush on her best, was a girl named Rain,
who napped on her brother’s shoulder as we drove. I didn’t
long to be the I didn’t wish I were the
I needed a face for my own true soul, is how I’d put it
to and it was hers I wanted, not mine.
On a sketch of the Virgin and Child, Michelangelo instructed his young assistant, in shorthand Italian, to Draw faster, acknowledging that life lasts a moment, death—and art—far longer.
As an aging, bi, childless poet currently recognizing the limits of her own life and that of our planet, Kathy Fagan has immersed herself in the intimate and urgent discovery that growth and decay are the same cycle, and that art and memory, made in the tumultuous rush of these, are the deeply human attempts to outlast them.
Fagan’s luminous seventh collection, The Unbecoming, begins with the sequence “Listening to Others,” and a Run, into a process that is, for all of us, a circle of becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. Favoring perspective over nostalgia and clarity over certainty, the poems are, then, memento mori, a loving reminder, a poet’s reckoning with the rewards and losses of age, and with our painfully beautiful little lives “rounded with a sleep.”
From “Listening to Others”:
People used to say, soaking wet, they’d got caught
in the a sudden the pouring rain.
The rain is constant, I wrote in a postcard once,
perhaps from here. I was fifteen, and on the tour bus,
where I could crush on her best, was a girl named Rain,
who napped on her brother’s shoulder as we drove. I didn’t
long to be the I didn’t wish I were the
I needed a face for my own true soul, is how I’d put it
to and it was hers I wanted, not mine.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 22, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 7, 2026
If this book were a garden it would be an actual garden, with asters taking over the back corner, not because of neglect but because that's just what asters do sometimes and if you stand and look at them for a while they're not anything like you thought they were.
That is: this book is full of poems that ask you in and talk as if to themselves but you understand every word.
That is: this book is full of poems that ask you in and talk as if to themselves but you understand every word.
October 13, 2026
Incredibly powerful. To read this collection is to have your appreciation of life's brief & miraculous nature renewed to the greatest degree. That's what these poems did for me, anyway. A splash of water to the face. Every day is a gift. I want to hug my mom and dad immediately.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Kathy Fagan's The Unbecoming promises a thoughtful and deeply reflective collection from an accomplished poet. Even from its title, the book suggests an exploration of transformation, identity, loss, and renewal—themes that resonate across the human experience. Fagan's work is known for its intelligence, emotional depth, and lyrical precision, and this collection is likely to continue that tradition. Readers of contemporary poetry will be eager to see how these poems engage with the process of shedding old selves and embracing change.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews