About the Collection

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 consider 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 I 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.