All We Are Given We Cannot Hold, Robert Fanning’s fifth collection of poetry, bravely traverses wide vistas of personal and universal terrain, exploring coast and horizon for what holds us and for what we cannot hold. Exploring boundaries of love, identity and desire, of marriage and family, of human compassion and enmity, of what is given to us and what we make, the journey ends with elegies for the poet’s mother, looking through her death toward what in us is boundless, toward where the infinite begins. For fans of Dylan Thomas and Theodore Roethke, this is a lyric collection not to be missed—a core sample from the middle of life, with all of its comings and goings and grievings.
