Last Poems

This book is a tender and fearless volume that combines the poems written toward the end of the author's life with the concluding poems from twenty-six of his previous volumes. Throughout his career and until the time of his death in 2008, he was writing a morally engaged poetry unlike any in American literature. As this volume demonstrates, he always remained unafraid to face the sufferings of the self while celebrating the dignity of others. In his final, posthumously published poems, he directly confronts his own failing body as well as the global injustices that haunted his writing for six decades. With essays by Stephen Dobyns and Brooks Haxton, Last Poems is a moving tribute to a towering and beloved figure in American poetry.