Failure and I Bury the Body by Sasha West

Failure and I Bury the Body by Sasha West

In Failure and I Bury the Body, selected by D. Nurkse for the National Poetry Series, Sasha West calls upon the tradition of medieval allegory to speak to modern anxieties.

Haunted by a melting Antarctica and the tragedies of the twentieth cen­tury, the narrator and the character of Failure take a road trip through the Southwestern desert.

Before long, the Corpse, an inescapable passenger, joins them. As the narrator and Failure attempt to rid themselves of his body, the linked poems investigate desire, extinction, and the made world.

Sasha West's poems have appeared in the Southern Review, Ninth Letter, Forklift, Ohio, Third Coast, Born, and elsewhere. She holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston, where she was editor of Gulf Coast. Her work has garnered awards including scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Rice University's Parks Fellowship, Pushcart nominations, and Inprint's Verlaine Prize. She lives in Austin with her husband and teaches writing at the University of Texas's LBJ School of Public Affairs.