National Network for Equitable Library Service

A “harrowing and hallucinogenic” collection of poems from the author of the New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award-finalist Citizen: An American Lyric (Library Journal). Claudia Rankine’s book-length poem about rising racial tensions in America, Citizen: An American Lyric, won numerous prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her new collection of poems—intrepid, obsessive, and erotic—tells the story of a woman’s attempt to reconcile herself to her own despair. Drawing on voices from Jane Eyre to Lady Macbeth, Rankine welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque. Whether writing about intimacy or alienation, what remains long after is her singular voice—its beguiling cadence and vivid physicality. There is an unprotected quality to this writing, as if each word has been pushed out along the precipice, daring us to go with it. Rankine’s power lies in the intoxicating pull of that dare. From one of contemporary poetry’s most powerful and provocative authors, The End of the Alphabet is a work where “wits at once keen and tenacious match themselves against grief’s genius” (Boston Review).