End of Empire

by Marissa Davis

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.

Genres: Poetry

125 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 1, 2025

Reviews

[Mere · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a poet, you sometimes read poetry that you know will forever change how you think about, approach, and write poetry. This is one of those books.

[Emily Vargas · Rating 5 out of 5]

every word, every sentence, is beautifully chosen and pieced together. truly exquisite. please read!!

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five-star fabulous! A work of consummate genius, this collection demands multiple readings to fully appreciate the poet’s observations of the empire and the entropy of its devolution. “The Living Soil” is a revelation.


Favorite Poems;
“Ecclesiastes: Deciduous”
“Ecclesiastes: Storm”
“If we had known,”
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dead Fish”
“Broke-Down Litany for an Empire’s End”
“Katabasis”
“The Singularity”
“The Living Soil”
“Altar-mondialism”

[Stacie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admirable in its environmental themes, complexity of construction, and anguished language. Mostly just too gloomy for me. Sorta like if Mary Oliver was sprayed by Rachel Carson’s DDT and the resulting bald eagle was born with 3 eyes and talons growing out of her shoulders. Perhaps that’s one of the points of the collection. Wild Grasses (Wild Geeses?) resonated. Read for Poetry with Pat but we decided to skip the discussion so I could return the copy to the library. 📚

[Jimi Evans Remick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A winding trek of dreams, internal suffering, erasure, hope, violence, and possibility in the face of despair. Poems that are complex constructions call us to witness what was, is, and could be.


Favs

*Psalms for the Unloved Body
*Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dead Fish
*Diaspora Poetica

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love when poems are written on the page like this, it makes so much sense in my head and brings another level to the poetry.

[Jiayuan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favourites:
Broke-down Litany for an Empire's End
Katabasis
The Living Soil
Ecclesiastes: Mapleseed

[Jeff Tang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection rendered me totally speechless. The thing that really struck me reading is the way Davis sneaks into your feelings - her precise and meticulous control of diction and form are quite studied and seem, well, formal at first - but as you revisit and revisit each poem in the collection, you start to become aware of the different voices, different enunciations, different cadences, and different timbres on each page and where in your brain and your emotional map each one is meant to live. It's a collection that rewards taking more time and reading slowly, that rewards reading along quietly and feeling the shape of the words on your tongue, that rewards reading it with a dictionary and perhaps an open Wikipedia tab nearby. It's by the time you've given it the hours it needs that you realize, without the active choice of letting it, that it has indelibly changed you, brought your emotional being miles away from where you started, connected you to the world, made you one with the ugliness and the beauty alike that we're surrounded by in the modern America.

The collection covers a lot of ground, to say the least - pointing at the creators, sustainers, beneficiaries, participants both willing and unwilling in empire across the globe. The fractal, recursive, self-similar structures of nature - from a cave network to organ systems, from neurons to fungal colonies, from teeth to stones to bones to mountains. The bee dying everywhere - in Ohio, Arizona, in Ethiopia, in Gaza - the way that hurting one part of a whole hurts the whole, that hurting the whole hurts every part of the whole. But crucially, that there can be a way forward from the world that we've *made* - if we remember, steward, and submit to the world that we pasted over.

Some favorites of mine, personally:
- Lot's Wife Tryptich: a haunting take on the Bible story, a harsh reminder of who is/ought to bear the consequences of that proverbial "sin of Sodom"
- Demeter and Child: A mother/daughter story that made me think of my own complicated relationship with my mom - how there sometimes can be nothing that hurts more than your parents' love
- Parable for the Apocalypse We Built - Pt. 1: The Forum: No summary needed, I hope
- Altar-mondialism: No word to describe this one other than simply epic. Huge in scale, tying together every other idea in this book, narrative at its core - and at the very end or maybe slightly after the last page, imagining a future where we're free from oppression, violence, exploitation - the end of empire.