The Final VoicemailsThe Final Voicemails
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Book, 2018
Current format, Book, 2018, First edition, Available .eBook
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Presents a final collection of poems dealing with the physical decay of dying, the tedium of illness, and keeping a love of life through his art.
<p><strong>“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.</strong></p><p>Diagnosed with terminal cancer at sixteen, Ritvo spent the next decade of his life pursuing poetry with frenetic energy, culminating in the publication of <em>Four Reincarnations</em>. As with his debut, <em>The Final Voicemails</em> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p><em>The Final Voicemails</em> is an ecstatic, hopeful, painful—and completely breathtaking—second collection.</p>
<b>“Max Ritvo sounds like no one else—this is the rarest of all possible gifts.” —LOUISE GLÜCK</b>
<p><strong>“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.</strong></p><p>Diagnosed with terminal cancer at sixteen, Ritvo spent the next decade of his life pursuing poetry with frenetic energy, culminating in the publication of <em>Four Reincarnations</em>. As with his debut, <em>The Final Voicemails</em> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p><em>The Final Voicemails</em> is an ecstatic, hopeful, painful—and completely breathtaking—second collection.</p>
<b>“Max Ritvo sounds like no one else—this is the rarest of all possible gifts.” —LOUISE GLÜCK</b>
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- Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2018.
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