Alive at the End of the World (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
Sometimes it takes a book of poetry to shake up the pieces of you. While reading Saeed’s Alive at the end of the World I was able to identify some of those pieces. I mean really examine them. When he writes about being haunted by grief, obsessing over rumors of icons being queer, confronting your own insecurities as a writer, as a friend, and as a partner. There were so many moments where I found myself reading a line and thinking to myself “I felt that''. It's not often that a poet's introspective collection of poetry allows the reader to also look within themselves. I’d recommend reading “Grief 213” (p. 18), “Saeed, or The Other One”(p.19), and “Okay, One More Story” (p. 48)
— MondeauxDescription
Pierced by grief and charged with history, this new poetry collection from the award-winning author of Prelude to Bruise and How We Fight for Our Lives confronts our everyday apocalypses.
In haunted poems glinting with laughter, Saeed Jones explores the public and private betrayals of life as we know it. With verve, wit, and elegant craft, Jones strips away American artifice in order to reveal the intimate grief of a mourning son and the collective grief bearing down on all of us.
Drawing from memoir, fiction, and persona, Jones confronts the everyday perils of white supremacy with a finely tuned poetic ear, identifying moments that seem routine even as they open chasms of hurt. Viewing himself as an unreliable narrator, Jones looks outward to understand what's within, bringing forth cultural icons like Little Richard, Paul Mooney, Aretha Franklin and Diahann Carroll to illuminate how long and how perilously we've been living on top of fault lines. As these poems seek ways to love and survive through America's existential threats, Jones ushers his readers toward the realization that the end of the world is already here--and the apocalypse is a state of being.
About the Author
Saeed Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and GQ, and he has been featured on public radio programs including NPR's Fresh Air, Pop Culture Happy Hour, It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders, and All Things Considered. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his dog, Caesar, and tweets @TheFerocity.
