Michael S. Begnal's Future Blues is both a progression of and a break with his previous collection, Ancestor Worship. Inasmuch as any poet's work is a continuing narrative defined by nothing more or less than chronology, Future Blues is the collection that follows its predecessor and so cannot help but be aware of it. The Irish Literary Supplement described Ancestor Worship as "an attempt at reconstructing an obscured heritage." While traces of such an impulse inevitably recur, Future Blues hurtles forward seeking out "new images and modes of being" even as our collective death looms.