Failure and I Bury the Body

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.

2012 National Poetry Series Selection

“Sasha West is an artist with a shovel. I want to say that her Whitmanesque lines dig a long way and relentlessly into the underbelly of America. But the grief in this book, the way its poems attend to the past as a truth always present, leads me to believe that there is more to her craft than the MFA tradition of comparing mineral to ore. Here is a poet willing to admit, ‘I did not know where to put the dead man’s body/so I…buried him here/in the back of my head…’ This stunning debut is an example of why writers call writing good, honest, hard work.” - Jericho Brown

“It’s a thrill to find poetry large enough to confront the vise in which we find ourselves in the twenty-first century. Sasha West’s work has that scope, that immediacy. Failure and I Bury the Body unfolds with the forward motion and wide horizon of myth. I thought of a visceral Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight for the age of storms -- a redemptive journey into the desert, to the ruins of the future. The quest here is bitterly American: we speed down a highway ‘like fire/running down a fuse,’ evil is dominion over the beasts of the field. I admire this book’s searing edge, human stakes, and vision of ‘the body’s wildness.’” - D. Nurkse

“Sasha West offers us a book that is utterly unprecedented, visionary, disturbing, beautiful, compelling -- here we are being offered a chance to actually occupy this moment that we find ourselves in, what we used to call the future. Here it is.” - Nick Flynn

“This stunning debut is an example of why writers call writing good, honest, hard work.” - Jericho Brown

“These poems are as much fables of the end of our civilization as they are fables of the self. I can think of no one in her generation who has taken on a more difficult subject, treated it with such passion and intelligence, and given so much linguistic pleasure.” - Tom Sleigh

“Failure and I Bury the Body unfolds with the forward motion and wide horizon of myth. I thought of a visceral Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight for the age of storms -- a redemptive journey into the desert, to the ruins of the future.” - D. Nurkse

“Sasha West has written a book of visionary enchantment and dystopic terror. If she foresees the end of the world, the language itself is always hard-edged, inventive, and under control. These poems are as much fables of the end of our civilization as they are fables of the self. I can think of no one in her generation who has taken on a more difficult subject, treated it with such passion and intelligence, and given so much linguistic pleasure.” - Tom Sleigh

“Is it possible to read a poem (or hear a song, or stand before any made thing) and say, Yes, this is what we were promised, this is what we’ve been waiting for, even if we didn’t know it, even if no one could name it or even imagined the shape it would take, even if we had given up hope we would ever get here? Here comes the praise: With Failure and I Bury the Body Sasha West offers us a book that is utterly unprecedented, visionary, disturbing, beautiful, compelling-here we are being offered a chance to actually occupy this moment that we find ourselves in, what we used to call the future. Here it is.” - Nick Flynn