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 tragedies of individual lives-the
simmering resentment of a lift operator an octogenarian's 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.
