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."
