Lovers whisper to each other at summer camp. The vizier of an ancient kingdom recalls the pleasures of his youth. A cockroach in the distant future evolves to write poetry of his own. Chosen by Roger Reeves as the winner of the 2024 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, The Twenty-First Century guides us through a breadth of environments and worlds — from far off times and places to the poet in the present, leaving Costco, wandering through the mazy streets of Queens. Drawing from both fictional and autobiographical material, these poems treat a range of subjects: the joys and terrors of childhood, music, art, desire, love. Some are narrative prose poems verging on parable, others lyric meditations or lyric sequences. The language throughout is simple and plainspoken, but the mystery is vast. It is the mystery of time — the fact that we are here and then gone. How can this be, these poems ask again and again, in a chorus of voices and an array of forms, until the question itself becomes a kind of song.
