The Final Voicemails

Even present tense has some of the grace of past tense, / what with all the present tense left to go. From Max Ritvoselected and edited by Louise Glckcomes 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 antagonistand it is a part of the self. Ritvos poems ring with considered reflection about the enduring final question, while suggestingin their vibrancy and their humorthat death is not merely an end. The Final Voicemails is an ecstatic, hopeful, painfuland completely breathtakingsecond collection.