In this Zen-infused and meditative collection, critically acclaimed poet Elizabeth Spires reflects on memory, mortality, and the boundaries of human existence. Inspired by the tradition of poetic interest in Zen, Spires explores selfhood and the search for a core identity, interrogating the divide between the social persona and the artist’s secret self. The poems in A Memory of the Future ask the unanswerable questions that become more pressing in the second half of life: How are we changed by the passage of time? How does memory define and shape us?