The Now describes the unique, and sometimes baffling, moment in which we live, a time defined by an immediate future of online wonderments, fake news, multiple personalities, data economy, gene modification, and the rest of the exciting-and-yet-ominous "technology culture," even as it's a time when the urge to memorialize the past?to sing elegiacally?seems more important than ever.
Between poems that consider the disappearance of language in an age of digital/binary communication, and poems that mourn the disappearance of fellow poets and artists, this collection attempts to stand on a nano-second that looks both backward and forward in time: the ever-shifting "now."

Albert Goldbarth has been publishing books for nearly fifty years. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Saving Lives and for Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology, the only poet to receive the honor two times. Goldbarth's other honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Milt Kessler Award. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry and multiple appearances in The Best American Poetry series and The Pushcart Prize. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.