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Elizabeth Metzger will discuss "The Going Is Forever: Poems." She will be joined in conversation by Richie Hofmann. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. At the Co-op.
About the book: A collection of “oracular, crystalline, and utterly original” poems wrestling with a life’s shifting social structures and the multifaceted totality of the self (Maggie Millner).
Elizabeth Metzger’s third collection traces both holding on and letting go, tracking the non-linear journeys we take and the daily distances we cross for intimacy. Braiding a dissolving marriage, a son’s medical crisis, and the death of a father, the speaker reconceives loss as transformation and longing as ongoing love, exploring the multiplicity of the self in proximity to others. How do we relate to what we cannot know about those we love? How can we separate from one another without embodying parts of ourselves we haven’t met yet?
The present revives the past, and every ending becomes a devotion to new beginnings as Metzger transforms ordinary domestic ruptures into intimate portals of pleasure and pain. A degenerative disease spurs a creative awakening. A trip to the farmer’s market invites questions of monogamy. An overgrown yard yields a crisis of faith. These poems fall in love with the absences that define us, retracing our chosen roads while following those less traveled and beckoning unlived lives.
Celebrating the ordinary and extraordinary changes we undergo together, this collection explores our most surprising fantasies and deep spiritual yearnings. An honest, intricate, and breathtaking distillation of love’s true nature, "The Going Is Forever" reminds us that our closest relationships contain endless mysteries, and that there is never just one version of a life.
About the author: Elizabeth Metzger is the author of "The Going Is Forever" and "Lying In," as well as "The Spirit Papers," winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She has published two chapbooks, "Bed" and "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death." Her poems have recently appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review, TLS, and Poetry. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches poetry at 92NY and Columbia University.
About the interlocutor: Richie Hofmann is the author of three books of poetry—"The Bronze Arms" (2026), "A Hundred Lovers" (2022), and "Second Empire" (2015)—and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poetry appears in The Paris Review and The New Yorker, and he has taught recently at Stanford University and the University of Chicago.
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Event venue
5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL, United States, Illinois 60637
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