In A Memory of the Future, critically acclaimed poet Elizabeth Spires
reflects on selfhood and the search for a core identity. Inspired by the
tradition of poetic interest in Zen, Spires explores the noisy space of
the mind, interrogating the necessary divide between the social persona
that navigates the world and the artist's secret self. With vivid,
careful attention to the minute details of everyday moments, A Memory
of the Future observes, questions, and meditates on the ordinary,
attempting to make sense of the boundaries of existence.
As the poems move from Zen reflections outward into the identifiable
worlds of Manhattan, Maine, and Maryland's Eastern shore, houses, both
real and imagined, become metaphorical extensions of the self and
psyche. These poems ask the unanswerable questions that become more
pressing in the second half of life. How are we changed by the passage
of time? How does memory define and shape us? As Spires reminds us, any
memory of the future will become, paradoxically, a memory of the past,
and of forgetting.