End of Empire

From a prizewinning poet whose work "points to an unfathomably bright future for the canon" (Danez Smith), a stunningly lush collection about desire, resilience, and our fraught and ecstatic relationship with the natural world

A collection as remarkable for the force of its feeling as for the range of its vision, End of Empire explores the tensions of Black and American identity within an ecological framework. Inspired by the language and landscape of the poet's rural Kentucky hometown and the ways that inherited religious and political narratives shape our relationships with our surroundings and ourselves, these poems reckon with the ways the speaker, their body, and their natural and ideological surroundings continuously remake each other. Formally dynamic, emotionally resonant, and rich with biblical, mythological, and historical allusions, these are elegant, impeccably crafted pieces that evoke the fearsome power of nature and of the tangled, sensual self.

Author: Marissa Davis
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 07/01/2025
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.40d
ISBN13: 9780143138471
ISBN10: 0143138472
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | African American & Black
- Poetry | Subjects & Themes | Animals & Nature
- Poetry | Women Authors

About the Author
Marissa Davis is a poet and translator from Paducah, Kentucky. Her writing has appeared in Poetry magazine, Narrative, Gulf Coast, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals. Her chapbook, My Name & Other Languages I Am Learning How to Speak (Jai-Alai Books, 2020) was selected for Cave Canem's 2019 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Davis holds an MFA from New York University and was a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow. Following years in Nashville, Tennessee, and Brooklyn, New York, she now lives in Paris, France, where she is pursuing a master's in Editorial, Economic, and Technical Translation at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.