Not on the Last Day, But on the Very Last: Poems

(Paperback)

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Winner of the National Poetry Series

Mothers masquerading as witches and sepulchral bellhops who reveal themselves to be fathers: in Justin Boenings debut collection of poems, selected for the National Poetry Series by Wayne Miller, nothing is as it seems.
Peopled by figures both uncanny and tragiclionesses who dance and cry, surgeons who carry with them the trauma of past lives, an opera singer whose notes go awryNot on the Last Day, but on the Very Last uses the language of dreams and of fairy tales to deliver a keenly felt exploration of family, grief, regret, and belonging. Here everything stands for something else. But though the Freudian mother and father lurk behind every sequined costume, continue to strip away the masks, Boening suggests, and youll find an even more primal absence at the centerNobody, No One, mortality, death. Beyond that, we find, lies only the truth of our relationships with each other.
Shot through with mournfulness, gorgeously spangled in its languagea squall of chrysanthemums / and the weirdNot on the Last Day, but on the Very Last is an unforgettable collection about our human failings and the grace we each seek.

Reviews

Praise for Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last "Justin Boening's lines consistently elude our expectations but somehow encourage and fulfill them in doing so. Surprise is a recurring texture throughout these shimmering poems, and no wonder, when 'we changed our laws as often as our laws allowed.' Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last is a stunning achievement."--John Ashbery "Boening's work is fearless, self-deprecating, ironic, sublime, heartbreaking, and beautifully wrought. His poems have a way of taking you off guard, of taking you from a real world of 'celestial certitudes' through a wilderness where the other world hangs in a 'museum / of what is not there,' a world of buskers and strangers, of fortunetellers, of a family gone wrong and a mother gone sour. There are many shadows, and many shades from a curdled past. His muse is an afterlife he swears by, but it is, likewise, one he swears cannot possibly exist. This book has a way of having its way with you, and you like it, you surrender to it. Boening asks, in this marvelous first collection, 'Is there another world Is it this one' You answer: Yes. It is. It is this one."--Lucie Brock-Broido "Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last is a book of vividly dreamlike Freudian meditations and parables. There's a wry fatalism throughout the collection as Boening leans toward an acceptance of mortality and, more importantly, our basic human capacity for failure--but there's also a quiet playfulness that emerges from inside the traps these poems make. I found myself consistently astonished and thrilled by their ability to reverberate in many directions at once, articulating elemental human paradoxes and needs in ways that feel vital and engaging and new."--Wayne Miller "Filled with unusual juxtapositions and quick cuts that make the poems seem movielike, even trancelike. These Ashbery-esque pieces are strange on the surface yet satisfying in the questions they ask and the challenging answers."--Library Journal

Author Bio

Born in the Adirondacks, Justin Boening is the author of chapbook, Self-Portrait as Missing Person, selected by Dara Wier for a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship. His poetry has received a "Discovery"/Boston Review Poetry Prize, and other awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Bucknell University, Vermont Studio Center, Summer Literary Seminars, and the St. Petersburg Review. A graduate of Columbia University's School of the Arts, Boening is currently a senior associate editor at Poetry Northwest and an instructor at the Columbia University Summer High School Program. He lives in Iowa City, IA.