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.

“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’ 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

“With insatiable imagination, subtle music, stark candor, an ingenious sense of play, and an all-encompassing vision, Elizabeth Spires builds poem after poem revealing world within word within world. Her subject is nothing less than the feral innocence and courage of a ‘poised / and ready’ soul in search of meaning, open to ebullient joy and harrowing loss…Discovering grandeur in miniature, alighting on a mortal’s fleeting moment in a sublime landscape, Spires enlarges the possibilities of lyric.”
—Phillis Levin