Lovers whisper to each other at summer camp. The vizier of an ancient kingdom recalls the pleasures of his youth. A cockroach in the distant future evolves to write poetry of his own. Chosen by Roger Reeves as the winner of the 2024 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, The Twenty-First Century guides us through a breadth of environments and worlds — from far off times and places to the poet in the present, leaving Costco, wandering through the mazy streets of Queens. Drawing from both fictional and autobiographical material, these poems treat a range of subjects: the joys and terrors of childhood, music, art, desire, love. Some are narrative prose poems verging on parable, others lyric meditations or lyric sequences. The language throughout is simple and plainspoken, but the mystery is vast. It is the mystery of time — the fact that we are here and then gone. How can this be, these poems ask again and again, in a chorus of voices and an array of forms, until the question itself becomes a kind of song.

About the Author

Jacob Eigen was born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn. He studied literature and philosophy at Deep Springs College and Yale and fiction writing at Hunter College. His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Salmagundi, and The Iowa Review. He currently lives in Chicago.

Roger Reeves is the author of Best Barbarian (Norton, 2022), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. His debut collection King Me (Copper Canyon, 2013), was a Library Journal Best Poetry Book of the year and winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. He teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.

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