"Even present tense has some of the grace of past tense, / what with
all the present tense left to go." From Max Ritvo--selected and edited
by Louise Glück--comes a final collection of poems fully inscribed with
the daring of his acrobatic mind and the force of his unrelenting
spirit.
Diagnosed with terminal cancer at sixteen, Ritvo spent the next decade
of his life pursuing poetry with frenetic energy, culminating in the
publication of Four Reincarnations. As with his debut, The Final
Voicemails brushes up against the pain, fear, and isolation that
accompany a long illness, but with all the creative force of an artist
in full command of his craft and the teeming affection of a human
utterly in love with the world.
The representation of the end of life resists simplicity here. It is
physical decay, but it is also tedium. It is alchemy, "the breaking
apart, / the replacement of who, when, how, and where, / with what." It
is an antagonist--and it is a part of the self. Ritvo's poems ring with
considered reflection about the enduring final question, while
suggesting--in their vibrancy and their humor--that death is not merely
an end.
The Final Voicemails is an ecstatic, hopeful, painful--and completely
breathtaking--second collection.
