Description
Book SynopsisThe latest dazzling collection of poems from Charles Martin, a modern poet working within the possibilities of traditional measures. To be modern is to live not in a single era, but in a churn of new technologies, deep history, myth, literary traditions, and contemporary cultural memes. In Future Perfect, Charles Martin's darkly comic new collection, the poet explores our time and the times that come before and after, which we inhabit and cultivate in memory and imagination. Through poems that play with form and challenge expectation, Martin examines the continuities that persist from time immemorial to the future perfect. Sensitive to the traces left behind by the lives of his characters, Martin follows their tracks, reflections, echoes, and shadows. In From Certain Footprints Found at Laetoli, an ancient impression preserved in volcanic ash conjures up a family scene three million years past. In The Last Resort of Mr. Kees and Mr. Kees Goes to a Party, Martin adopts the persona o
Table of ContentsDiscontents
I. Self as Others
When We Had It All
Octaves of Another Eden
From Certain Footprints Found at Laetoli
Variations on a Theme by Martial
The Last Resort of Mr. Kees
Narcissism for Beginners
Mr. Kees Goes to a Party
Letter from Komarovo
‘Noi Antri’
The Woman Taken in Adultery
The Locked Room Mystery of Mr. Kees
A Happy Ending for Iphis and Ianthe
Mr. Kees Comes to a Conclusion
Blue Eyes
The Afterlife of Mr. Kees
II. From The Medea Of Eurpides
III. Notes From The Future Perfect
Notes From the Future Perfect
Farewell, Voyager I
Notes to the Poems
Acknowledgements
About the author
