{"product_id":"the-unbecoming-poems-9781324131397","title":"The Unbecoming: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn a sketch of the Virgin and Child, Michelangelo instructed his young assistant, in shorthand Italian, to \u003cem\u003eDraw faster\u003c\/em\u003e, acknowledging that life lasts a moment, death--and art--far longer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs an aging, bi, childless poet currently recognizing the limits of her own life and that of our planet, Kathy Fagan has immersed herself in the intimate and urgent discovery that growth and decay are the same cycle, and that art and memory, made in the tumultuous rush of these, are the deeply human attempts to outlast them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFagan's luminous seventh collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Unbecoming\u003c\/em\u003e, begins with the sequence \"Listening to Others,\" and a command: Run, into a process that is, for all of us, a circle of becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. Favoring perspective over nostalgia and clarity over certainty, the poems are, then, memento mori, a loving reminder, a poet's reckoning with the rewards and losses of age, and with our painfully beautiful little lives \"rounded with a sleep.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom \"Listening to Others\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePeople used to say, soaking wet, they'd got caught\u003cbr\u003e in the rain: a sudden downpour: the pouring rain.\u003cbr\u003e The rain is constant, I wrote in a postcard once, \u003cbr\u003e perhaps from here. I was fifteen, and on the tour bus, \u003cbr\u003e where I could crush on her best, was a girl named Rain, \u003cbr\u003e who napped on her brother's shoulder as we drove. I didn't\u003cbr\u003e long to be the shoulder: I didn't wish I were the girl: \u003cbr\u003e I needed a face for my own true soul, is how I'd put it\u003cbr\u003e to myself: and it was hers I wanted, not mine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e W. W. Norton \u0026amp; Company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/22\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781324131397\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 104\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/01\/2026 pg. 62\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Kathy Fagan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52873280061621,"sku":"9781324131397","price":22.94,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-unbecoming-poems-9781324131397","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}