Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Playlist for the Apocalypse

Poems

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Poetry)

A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from "perhaps the best public poet we have" (Boston Globe).

In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America's, and the world's, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls' night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali's conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history's grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives.

Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine's Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book's final section, "Little Book of Woe," which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness.

At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you'll hear in return is "a lifetime of song."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      August 1, 2021
      This is Dove's first new collection in a dozen years, following her Collected Poems, 1974-2004 (2016), and it is a potent and many-chambered volume showcasing the highly awarded former U.S. Poet Laureate's signature gift for historical illumination, especially in sharp and poignant portraits of marginalized figures. Here her subjects include Henry Martin, born into slavery at Monticello the day Thomas Jefferson died and who served as the Rotunda bellringer at the University of Virginia, where Dove is a professor, for more than 50 years. Sarra Copia Sullam (1592-1641) was confined to Venice's Jewish ghetto yet became a prominent literary and intellectual luminary. In "The Standing Witness," a song cycle of searing concision inspired by the Statue of Liberty, Dove considers the American story from the assassinations of 1968 through the reign of Muhammad Ali, Roe v. Wade, AIDS, 9/11, the Obama presidency, and the whiplash of Trump. Here, too, are poems of pirouetting wit and jujitsu power about family, food, nature, memory, complacency, protest, and her own valiant battle for health. Dove is a poet of profound perspective, genius, and grace.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading