Carlson-Wee and Anders — The Disease of Kings

Description

W. W. Norton & Company, hardcover

Publication Date: October 3, 2023

Publisher Marketing: In poems bursting with narrative power, Disease of Kings explores the tender yet volatile friendship between two young scammers living off the fat of society. Here are stories of an odd couple who scrounges, cons, hustles, and steals, nursing a sense of freedom that is fraught with codependence and isolation. With plainspoken language and tremendous tonal range, Anders Carlson-Wee leads us into the heart of their uneasy domesticity–a purgatory where, in this poet’s vision, it is possible for loss to give way to hope, lack to fulfillment, shame to gratitude.

From “The Juggler”
As if we could sing what we can’t say.
Catch what we can never hold. Now
the ring of the crowd tightens for the show.

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