Don't Die
by Michael Blumenthal
A powerful meditation on mortality and the will to live
Don't Die: Poems 2013-2021 is Michael Blumenthal's most insightful, raw and important work to date. "One of the natural poets of his generation," praised Seamus Heaney, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. "The intellect of a scholar, the sensitivity of a poet, the objectivity of a professor of law: it hardly seems possible that so many virtues can be embodied in one," wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic and translator, C.K. Williams.
Purchase
Buy on AmazonPraise
"Michael Blumenthal's quick wit and clever puns, his cranky, rueful, well-made poems, can't hide the mortal pain that drives and invigorates this book of late intensities and humane understandings. Don't Die is a lively intervention, a book of mourning and celebration."
— Edward Hirsch, winner of the National Book Critics Prize for Poetry and President, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
"Michael Blumenthal is a much-decorated, award-winning poet/scholar, so it was with great anticipation that I agreed to review his latest book, Don't Die: Poems, 2013-2021… This new volume does not disappoint. Blumenthal may go on to write other books—he is only 72—but this book feels like a culmination of topic and sensibility… Overall, one can say of Don't Die as a whole that the poems feel comfortable in the richest sense. Not without pain or suffering, but having pushed through to fulfillment and a good dose of humor and self-realization… a satisfying place to arrive."
— David Radavich, TRANS-LIT2