Forever: Poems

by James Longenbach

In lucid, elegant poems, Forever contemplates love against the pressing question of mortality after a diagnosis of cancer. Praised for a voice with "the crystalline, transformative, pure pitch of a lyric poet" (Ilya Kaminsky), James Longenbach explores a life lived with the knowledge of its end in his sixth collection. These luminous, lyrical poems pose a Why did this poet once live as if he would live forever? And what does it mean to know that we will not? Forever explores the meaning of love, from its discovery in the first poem, "Two People," to its maintenance in the last, "Forever." In between, the volume explores the precariously imminent demise of all that we love the finite lives of other people, the mortal beauty of Venice―all thrown into urgent relief by the poet’s own cancer diagnosis. Evoking "the vivid dailiness of domestic life…and the specificity and poignance" of memories, "these lyrics are intimately personal, achingly autobiographical" (Langdon Hammer, American Scholar ). Forthright, moving, and wry, the poems in Forever look back gratefully―excitedly―on a lifetime of self-making and self-shattering events.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Hardcover

Published June 22, 2021

About the author

James Longenbach is a poet and critic whose work is often featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Slate. He lives in Rochester, New York.

Reviews

[Ian Blyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book of poetry by an unfortunately recently deceased poet, Forever is a book that reckons with death and the legacies one leaves behind. James Logenbach never was anyone's idea of a slouch at writing poetry, but this book is perhaps his finest work. Despite being a book largely about death, the poems in this collection rarely feel sad. A thread of optimism runs through the pages, both for what might come after death and the legacies one leaves behind. I hate to assign labels to books, but this book feels extremely brave in its ability to face death and come out all the stronger for it.

This is a book everyone should read.

[Camille Dungy]

Longenbach’s lyric poems hold in them the leaf-lost trees, rising waters, and salt-corroded bricks of a tenuously balanced life. It is hard, sometimes, to differentiate life from loss, love from longing, or Venice, Italy from the stream-strewn coastal stretches of New Jersey. Everything is connected in the taut, interwoven poems contained in Forever.

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/12/fif...

[Nikki Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only gave this 4 stars instead of five because some of it felt a bit esoteric to me and obviously that affected my reading relationship w it

but there is so much reflection and soothing yet thought provoking imagery and scene setting here

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe my favorite Longenbach book yet. These poems are breathtaking, full of love and sadness and spaces of beauty. And full of time, which is always coming for us.

[Cassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should’ve done a more thorough look through before I bought the book. Also , maybe should’ve read it a tiny bit more slowly but I don’t think that would’ve made much difference in my liking it

[Akshaya Amarnath · Rating 4 out of 5]

after seeing what he can do with words i don’t feel i have the right to use them anymore

[Wako Soma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"in the village"
"Thursday"
"Forever"

the harbor/the sea?

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

💔

[Madelyn Elizondo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Little Island, page 3 was my favorite piece of this book. It details growing old and the fears that accompany this inescapable fate. Like a city and the buildings that it is composed of, you grow old and the elements of your body decay. You believe this to be ugly and horrifying, when in reality it is all relative to perspective, just as the beauty within the decaying buildings is relative to those who view it.