A Memory of the Future: Poems

by Elizabeth Spires

Overview

New York Times Book Review Best Poetry of 2018

“Like a cup of tea for the weary.” —Washington Post

In this Zen-infused and meditative collection, critically acclaimed poet Elizabeth Spires reflects on memory, mortality, and the boundaries of human existence. Inspired by the tradition of poetic interest in Zen, Spires explores selfhood and the search for a core identity, interrogating the divide between the social persona and the artist’s secret self. The poems in A Memory of the Future 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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393358292
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/23/2020
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Spires is the author of seven poetry collections, including Worldling and The Wave-Maker. Her poetry has appeared in the Atlantic and The New Yorker, among other publications. A professor at Goucher College, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Pome 3

Life of i 7

Cloud Koan 9

$$$ 11

Riddle 13

I 14

Zen Sonnet 16

The Road 17

Enso 20

The Sound of the Sea at the Shore 22

Mountains of the Heart 24

Light Like Water 29

They Drive Through Childhood in Their Little Cars 31

The Amiable Child 32

March: St. John the Divine 34

The Streaming 35

Pigeon 7 A.M. 37

On Riverside Drive 39

Small as a Seed 41

She Leans 42

Island Graveyard 43

Magicicada 46

Gold Bug 48

The Shrine 53

Dream Interrupted 54

Constructing a Religion 56

Picture of a Soul 58

Small Prayer 59

House of String 60

Snow, the Novel 63

Sake 64

Starry Night 66

Riddle 67

A Memory of the Future 68

My Life 69

Crab 73

Notes 76

Acknowledgments 79

Editorial Reviews

"[Elizabeth Spires’s] haunting work is filled with a mix of active spiritualism intersecting with meditational silences.… These poems glow with interiority—profound, intense, spiritual."

New York Journal of Books - Laverne Frith

"The poems feel like prayers, and in some cases koans—each unique but all with a timeless, spiritual quality.… Little nuggets of wisdom come like offerings placed on an altar, quietly, with grace and intention."

Baltimore magazine - Lauren LaRocca

"There are a number of instances where [Spires] uses words with such sparing potency, a veteran surgeon who knows how to make the smallest incision to get to what she’s after."

Johns Hopkins Magazine - Bret McCabe

"The spare, sly lines in A Memory of the Future are a reminder that the game of a poem is sometimes better advanced by underplaying."

The Best Poetry of 2018 - New York Times Book Review - David Orr

"Sprinkled with philosophical inquiries and Zen koans like that of the title, Spires’s contemplative [seventh] collection opens with delicious wordplay."

New York Times Book Review

"All the distinguishing characteristics we’ve come to associate with Elizabeth Spires’s poems—their shimmering clarity, verbal restraint, and self-interrogations—are enacted in this new work of meticulous surfaces and surprising depths. . . . Spires’s consuming subject—the fluidity of time set against the immutable presence of death—is approached with Zen-sparked simplicity: ‘As one grows older, / there should be fewer / and fewer words to say.’ Yet those few words, as set down in A Memory of the Future, resonate with wisdom and insistent wonder."

Michael Waters

"Quiet and forceful, Spires has taken random moments and created a book full of memories through her words, altering the future for those fortunate enough to read her work."

Shelf Awareness - Lee E. Cart

"A book worthy of pondering… Spires offers so many questions and considerations, yet they all return to our fleeting existences."

Millions - Nick Ripatrazone

"It is a pleasure to read Elizabeth Spires’s new book.… The entire book, including its cover, shows a love of the transparent philosophy of Zen and the art associated with it and perhaps a desire for its detachment."

Hudson Review - Mark Jarman

"This is poetry just about anyone might savor.… A Memory of the Future gives us what’s more valuable than easy answers, the questioning."

Hollins Critic - Jeanne Larsen