Songs of Sadness Joy and Despair for the Anthropocene: a poem in one hand, a razor in the other

Songs of Sadness is a volume of long poems featuring Josie Delgado: A Poem of the Central Valley but ranging from grief to memory, from historical violence to inheritance, and reflections on artistic lineage. The poetry makes adistinction between private poems and public work. The private poems assert that private poetic practice can harbor a writer’s most powerful material. The poet places the poems in a lineage that reaches back to the Iliad but includes reference to St. John Perse and Derek Walcott-that positions the volume within a lineage of epic, extended poetic writing.