Awards

• Short-listed for Library of Virginia Literary Award 2022
• Short-listed for Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2021
• Short-listed for NAACP Image Award 2022

Overview

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 Black Lives Matter, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history's grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives?the simmering resentment of an elevator operator, an octogenarian's exuberant mambo, the mordant humor of a philosophizing cricket. Audaciously playful yet grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to apocalyptic failures of the human soul.

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9780393867770

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Reviews

These poems witness and celebrate the grandeur and tragedy contained in a single life, a single moment, a single word. -- Cornelia Channing - New York Magazine Following a year of inconceivable uncertainty and pulsating change, the title of former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove's new volume of poetry, Playlist for the Apocalypse, feels more than apropos. The book, the Pulitzer Prize winner's first collection of new poetry in 12 years, is as much a celebration as it is a study in the resilience of humanity. Musing on the triumphs and challenges of being mortal, Dove seamlessly travels from past to present, with everlasting hope for our future. -- 36 New Books You Need to Read This Summer, - TIME Magazine

Author Information

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate, is the only poet honored with both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. Her recent works include Playlist for the Apocalypse, Sonata Mulattica, and the National Book Award-shortlisted Collected Poems: 1974-2004. In 2021 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She lives in Charlottesville, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.

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