It Takes a Lifetime

About the Book

In this, his third poetry collection, LELjr continues to reflect on themes explored in Out of My Mind (2016) and (Older Now (2018): romantic love, aging, memory and mortality. But the poems in It Takes a Lifetime considers these and other themes from the perspective of having lived even a longer life, with meditations on identity, legacy, and the meaning of life in what he has previously called “the narrowing space between memory and morality”. Who have a been and who am I now? he asks, concluding that the question is a conundrum. As the body’s capacities diminish, he notes, one spends more time living in one’s head, where the capacities of mind and imagination grow as more time is spent in introspection. These ideas are explored in the same expressive modes as his previous collections: contemplation, introspection, insight, and emotion.

About the Author

LELjr, under his given name Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., is the Sydney Stein Jr. Professor Emerirus of the University of Chicago. He is the author or co-author of a dozen monographs and a textbook in the academic field of public affairs and has also taught at Harvard, Stanford, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas. He is also the author of a collection of short stories, An Iberian Trilogy and Other Stories. He lives with his wife, artist prlynn, in Austin Texas and has five children, nine grandchildren, three great grandchildren (and counting).