A poetic elegy for slain journalist James Foley

In 2011, New Hampshire journalist James Foley was kidnapped in Libya and spent 44 days imprisoned before being released. In 2012, on Thanksgiving, he disappeared in Syria, and on August 19, 2014, he was beheaded by

ISIS. Daniel Brock Johnson, poet, executive director of Mass Poetry, and Foley’s best friend, has written a collection of poems that documents and honors Foley’s life and death. “Shadow Act: An Elegy for Journalist James Foley” (McSweeney’s) is a grieving achievement, a collection of heaving force and tenderness, exploring “absence, presence, & the shining, alchemical ever-presence of absence.” The book includes fragments of Foley’s biography (titles of a novel-inprogress, the last voicemail, bits of his letters hidden in a shoe: “part of me wants to witness/ what the end will be, to report it”). The book excavates the time when a person missing is alive and dead at the same time, and the ongoing conversation after death is confirmed. Among the memories, character sketches, old stories, and adventures he shared with his friend, Johnson writes, too, of his life here and now, his children, eating raspberries, “sliced apples./ Lemonade./ This is our book/ of days.” Most haunting of all, the recounting of a party upon Foley’s return after his initial release from kidnapping, toasts, a white party tent, and “he stared off & through us/ like he saw something we couldn’t —”. Proceeds of the book will benefit the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation which “advocates for the freedom of all Americans held hostage abroad and promotes the safety of journalists worldwide.”