Playlist for the Apocalypse

In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding the worlds experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or Black Lives Matter, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect historys grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual livesthe simmering resentment of a lift operator, an octogenarians exuberant mambo, the mordant humour of a philosophising 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.