The Last Song of the World

Joseph Fasano’s The Last Song of the World delves into the chaos of the modern world, and searches for resilience in the face of environmental and societal devastation. Dripping with images of ancient ruins and mythological figures, these poems serve as vignettes of fatherhood, love, and desire against the backdrop of apocalyptic events.

Through the documentation of ongoing violence and natural phenomena, Fasano depicts the ever-present anxieties of parenting with concision and compassion. The Last Song of the World is a love letter to the world that could be-a world as tender as it is bold, as loving as it is brutal, as beautiful as it is horrendous.

Joseph Fasano is a poet, novelist, and songwriter. His books include The Last Song of the World (2024), The Swallows of Lunetto(2022), The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (2020), The Crossing (2018), Vincent(2015), Inheritance(2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, eight Pushcart Prize nominations, and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, ＂awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year.＂ His book The Magic Words (TarcherPerigee, 2024), a collection of poetry prompts and exercises, helps people of all ages unlock their creativity. His writing has been widely translated and anthologized, most recently in The Forward Book of Poetry 2022 (Faber and Faber).