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."

• We started tracking this book on October 15, 2020.
• This book was $22.73 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 12 times in the past 2,023 days.
• The current price of this book is $9.99 last checked 8 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past year.
• The lowest price to date was $9.32 last reached on August 31, 2021.
• This book has been $9.32 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $22.73 last reached on January 22, 2021.
• This book has been $22.73 2 times since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionPoetryAmericanBlack & African American

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 128 Pages
• File Size: 31 KB