{"product_id":"the-unbecoming-by-kathy-fagan-9781324131397","title":"The Unbecoming","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\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\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs an ageing, bi, childless poet currently recognising 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\n\n\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. Favouring 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\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom \"Listening to Others\":\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePeople used to say, soaking wet, they'd got caught\u003cbr\u003e\nin the rain: a sudden downpour: the pouring rain.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe rain is constant, I wrote in a postcard once,\u003cbr\u003e\nperhaps from here. I was fifteen, and on the tour bus,\u003cbr\u003e\nwhere I could crush on her best, was a girl named Rain,\u003cbr\u003e\nwho napped on her brother's shoulder as we drove. I didn't\u003cbr\u003e\nlong to be the shoulder: I didn't wish I were the girl:\u003cbr\u003e\nI needed a face for my own true soul, is how I'd put it\u003cbr\u003e\nto myself: and it was hers I wanted, not mine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67712352190700,"sku":"9781324131397","price":68.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781324131397-the-unbecoming-1.jpg?v=1791854808","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/products\/the-unbecoming-by-kathy-fagan-9781324131397","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}