Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero
*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Longlist*
In Stay Dead, Shapero examines performance, power, comedy, and despair through the lenses of method acting and abstract expressionism.
The politics of labor and performance collide with comedy and tragedy in Natalie Shapero's fourth poetry collection, Stay Dead. Shapero's unflinching poems explore theories of acting, discourses of survival, privacy and publicity, power and punchlines, and the language of despair. This work explores how your death place / is the birthplace you choose. With appearances by Claude Monet, Mark Rothko, Chris Burden, Studs Terkel, Anthony Bourdain, Gene Kelly, and others, Shapero investigates themes of method acting, abstract expressionism, and the production and commodification of intense expression and raw interiority. She offers sly examinations of labor and housing markets. She interrogates the influence of artists' material conditions on the work they produce and the culture they shape. With a cutting, sardonic voice, Shapero asks what it means to be a working artist under capitalism; which individuals are permitted earnest extensions of the self; and whether being born is worth it.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781556597121 |
| ISBN 10 | 1556597126 |
| Title | Stay Dead |
| Author | Natalie Shapero |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Copper Canyon Press,U.S. |
| Year published | 2025-10-23 |
| Number of pages | 104 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |