The Poetry Book Club "Playlist for the Apocalypse" by Rita Dove

The Poetry Book Club led by Doug Knowlton. April’s selection is “Playlist for the Apocalypse” by Rita Dove.

This monthly book club led by Doug is for those who like to read and discuss poetry. It celebrates the integral role of poets and poetry in life and literature. April’s selection is Playlist for the Apocalypse , a piercing, unflinching new volume from Rita Dove that offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from “perhaps the best public poet we have” ( Boston Globe ).
We will meet in person at our store at The Mark, 117 S. Pineapple Ave. The book club is $16 which includes a copy of Playlist for the Apolcalypse to be picked up at Bookstore1 any time before our meeting.
About Playlist for the Apocalypse:
Finalist for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry
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 conscientious 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 Apocalyps e 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.”
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. A professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia, she lives in Charlottesville.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
All signed up and unable to go? Please let us know! Seating is limited and there may be people on our waitlist who would like to to take your place. Please send an email to bryn@sarasotabooks.com ASAP and hopefully we’ll see you next time.
Click here to go to the Bookstore1 Sarasota website: https://www.sarasotabooks.com/.