THE AFTER PARTY

A brilliant, indispensible volume of poems from a major new voice of contemporary poetry, whose poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books. Honest, bold, and visionary, these poems are sure to confirm Prikryl’s standing as one of her generation’s greatest poets.

Jana Prikryl’s The After Party journeys across borders and eras, from cold war Central Europe to present-day New York City, from ancient Rome to New World suburbs, constantly testing the lingua francas we negotiate to know ourselves. These poems disclose the tensions in our inherited identities and showcase Prikryl’s ambitious experimentation with style.

“Thirty Thousand Islands,” the second half of the collection, presents some forty linked poems that incorporate numerous voices. Rooted in one place that fragments into many places—the remote shores of Lake Huron in Canada, a region with no natural resources aside from its beauty—these poems are an elegy that speaks beyond grief.

Penetrating, vital, and visionary, The After Party marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.