Gregory Djanikian's Nostalgia for the Future: New and Selected Poems, written over several decades, takes for its many subjects romantic love and its difficulties, the horrors of the Armenian genocide of 1915, the e migre experience and the joys and struggles of acculturation, the allure of landscapes and vast distances, the polarity of our material life on earth and our longing for what is ethereal and elusive, all in tones that are humorous, elegiac, contemplative, lyrical, and suffused with a gratitude for the mysteriousness and wonder of life itself.