Six years ago, Alan Felsenthal's Lowly was heralded in the Boston Review for its "dreamlike fables and quasi-parables ... [a] striking debut collection [that] bypasses many of contemporary poetry's usual movements, feints and sources." Now, Felsenthal's poignant second collection of poems, Hereafter, moves between the difficult work of mourning and the spirited nature of life. Both an elegy for a dear friend and a search for signs of renewal, these poems recover pastoral symbols of sorrow from cliché. Essential in their attempt at consolation, Felsenthal's requiems traverse landscapes--the ocean, the earth and the moon--using both humor and pathos to awaken the depths of feeling that follow loss.
Alan Felsenthal is the author of Lowly (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). He currently serves as the head of The Song Cave. His writing has appeared in BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail, Harper's, the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine. He teaches poetry at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.