Playlist for the Apocalypse

By Rita Dove,

Book cover of Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems

Book description

In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding 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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Playlist for the Apocalypse as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

What I love most about this book is the strident, confident way the poems tackle our expectations about prose and poetic genres. Right from the collection's first poem, the book says that language is only the beginning; it still has its limits, though it can achieve longevity in the right conditions. 

However, my favorite poem of the collection is 'Shakespeare Doesn't Care,' a poem where Dove imagines Shakespeare’s confident, coy response to comments on his prolific, inimitable career. In doing so, she highlights how his work points the finger of judgment through time. Dove does this, too.

This is not…

From Caroliena's list on poetry during catastrophe.

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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