Myths, Apocalypses, and Underworlds

Poems that traverse tales and truths enduring beneath the present. 

Drawing from the story of the Garden of Eden, mythological figures, contemporary films, and current catastrophes, these gratifying works from award-winning poets meditate upon grief, displacement, the rebellion of joy, and the apocalypses of the present.

This collection contains:

Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones: Pierced by grief and charged with history, this poetry collection confronts our everyday apocalypses. Jones strips away American artifice in order to reveal the intimate grief of a mourning son and the collective grief bearing down on all of us. 

Exiles of Eden by Ladan Osman: Poems steeped in the Somali tradition refract the streets of Ferguson, the halls of Guantánamo, and the fields near Abu Ghraib through the myth of Adam and Eve to ask: What does it mean to be a refugee?

Good Stock Strange Blood by Dawn Lundy Martin: Bold, formally innovative prose poems that challenge our ideas of race, voice, bodies, and justice.

The Malevolent Volume by Justin Phillip Reed: An exploration of the myths and transformations of Black being, on a continuum between the monstrous and the sublime.

Things to Do in Hell by Chris Martin: A poetic walking tour of hell—or is it heaven? Martin’s poems wrestle with reconciling the shocking horrors and common graces of everyday life in America.

Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi: Poems from a father, a refugee, an activist resisting the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor. Thousand Star Hotel confronts the silence around racism, police brutality, and the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor.