Punks: New & Selected Poems

by John Keene

A landmark collection of poetry by acclaimed fiction writer, translator, and MacArthur Fellow John Keene, Punks: New & Selected Poems is a generous treasury in seven sections that spans decades and includes previously unpublished and brand new work. With depth and breadth, Punks weaves together historic narratives of loss, lust, and love. The many voices that emerge in these poems—from historic Black personalities, both familial and famous, to the poet's friends and lovers in gay bars and bedrooms—form a cast of characters capable of addressing desire, oppression, AIDS, and grief through sorrowful songs that "we sing as hard as we live." At home in countless poetic forms, Punks reconfirms John Keene as one of the most important voices in contemporary poetry.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Nonfiction, Queer Lit, Race

222 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2021

About the author

John Keene is the author of the novel Annotations (New Directions); the poetry collection Seismosis (1913 Press), an art-text collaboration with artist Christopher Stackhouse; the short fiction collection Counternarratives, published in 2015 by New Directions; and the poetry collection Punks: New & Selected Poems, published in 2021 by The Song Cave. His translation of Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer (Nightboat Books) appeared in 2014. His stories, poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a wide array of periodicals and anthologies, including most recently Vice, TriQuarterly, The Offing, and Boundary. An artist as well, he has exhibited his work in New York and Berlin, and teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.