Description: Poems that reimagine poetry's ancient dream of collective life from within the nightmare and necessities of our present.
Review Quotes:
"[O'Brien's poems] bring to bear the full resources of English prosody on our insane political present while also maintaining a position of wonder before the material world."--Ben Lerner, The New Yorker
"This [collection] proves to be an intriguing, thoughtful, and ambitiously layered collection, drawing from the past to hold a mirror to the present."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"One of the most exciting poets now writing."--Craig Morgan Teicher, Time Out New York
"What is the fate of a surface in destruction? The surface of O'Brien's writing is already showing us. It proliferates, breaking down into countless facets--line, phrase, word--each of which carries a full poetic charge."--Cole Swensen, Boston Review