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Mesopotopia

Part of Penguin Poets

Author Anne Waldman
Paperback
$20.00 US
| $27.99 CAN
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
On sale Aug 12, 2025 | 240 Pages | 9780143137023
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From “one of the most important and irreducible living American poets” (Poetry Foundation) comes a powerful and prophetic collection of epic scope and vision

Mesopotopia explores the vast sweep of our accelerating, precipitous world. From the cradle to the grave, from the mysterious poetic origins of Mesopotamia to our own dystopias of the twenty-first century, Anne Waldman crafts a singular, radical investigation into the syncretic layers of quantum space and dreamtime. She invokes “studying” as the most compelling ritual and tool for evolution and travels to various fellaheen worlds, treading metabolic pathways and ancient “antitheses realities,” and gleans sacred texts that speak urgently through the transports and telepathies of poetry. Troubadour dawn songs, pyramid texts, Buddhist mantras, canonical hours of Judeo-Christian tradition, Persian prayers, Druid sorcery, and the wild, gnarly syntax and modal structure of Waldman’s particular performative passion and wit are all conjured here.

What emerges is a meditation on the salient words of the French poet Antonin Artaud contemplating the destruction and rubble post–World War II: “We are not yet born, we are not yet in the world, there is not yet a world, things have not been made, the reason for being has not yet been found.” Mesopotopia—mythic maelstrom, rhythmic rite of passage, protolanguage trance dance—moves toward release and gnosis.
Advance praise for Mesopotopia:

“Shattered light in search of sprung lyric: with boundless energy, Anne Waldman has forged an epochal poem in the seams and veils of hermetic unfoldings. Mesopotopia is a restless, wrestling, rousing, terracotta (earthen) anti-war warrior.” —Charles Bernstein, author of The Kinds of Poetry I Want

Praise for Anne's previous collection, Trickster Feminism:

“The pervading mood in Trickster Feminism is of a piece with our national mood: gloom-filled, sorrowing, yet occasionally threaded with hope . . . Reading Waldman is like being in the world today.” —New York Times Book Review

“Waldman calls upon multiple resources – spirits, suffragettes, and heroines alike – to help defeat the trickster who disempowers women through capitalism and other tools . . . Waldman presents a complicated panorama of places and events – including resistance after the 2016 U.S. presidential election – in these accomplished, intertwined pieces.” —Washington Post

“Very apropos and very prescient . . . what’s reeling and alive is the freshness of topicality, personal and public, in this collection: ICE and immigration, the DOJ’s current personnel, the Women’s March, Oligarchism and global money laundering, technocracy, ‘Anthropocene weather complexities, nuclear threats, and so on.” —The Brooklyn Rail

“Reads like a spellbook — a mix of prose, verse, illustration and photography, woven together like the instructions to a ritual. But the incantatory poetry of Trickster Feminism is practical magic, Waldman’s way of meditating on — and taking action against — what she says are increasingly difficult times.” —PBS.org

“Waldman’s poems are layered, enchanting, and challenging, but if you’re willing to go along for the ride, their movements will unsettle your thinking on gender, feminism, and the political powers at large in the United States today.” —Tricycle Magazine
© Shannon Sky
Anne Waldman is a revered poet, performer, professor, editor, and cultural activist. She is the author of more than forty-five books, including Gossamurmur, Manatee/Humanity, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, and the feminist epic The Iovis Trilogy, which won the 2012 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry. The recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Waldman makes her home in New York City and in Boulder, Colorado, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Writing and Poetics and artistic director of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University. View titles by Anne Waldman

About

From “one of the most important and irreducible living American poets” (Poetry Foundation) comes a powerful and prophetic collection of epic scope and vision

Mesopotopia explores the vast sweep of our accelerating, precipitous world. From the cradle to the grave, from the mysterious poetic origins of Mesopotamia to our own dystopias of the twenty-first century, Anne Waldman crafts a singular, radical investigation into the syncretic layers of quantum space and dreamtime. She invokes “studying” as the most compelling ritual and tool for evolution and travels to various fellaheen worlds, treading metabolic pathways and ancient “antitheses realities,” and gleans sacred texts that speak urgently through the transports and telepathies of poetry. Troubadour dawn songs, pyramid texts, Buddhist mantras, canonical hours of Judeo-Christian tradition, Persian prayers, Druid sorcery, and the wild, gnarly syntax and modal structure of Waldman’s particular performative passion and wit are all conjured here.

What emerges is a meditation on the salient words of the French poet Antonin Artaud contemplating the destruction and rubble post–World War II: “We are not yet born, we are not yet in the world, there is not yet a world, things have not been made, the reason for being has not yet been found.” Mesopotopia—mythic maelstrom, rhythmic rite of passage, protolanguage trance dance—moves toward release and gnosis.

Reviews

Advance praise for Mesopotopia:

“Shattered light in search of sprung lyric: with boundless energy, Anne Waldman has forged an epochal poem in the seams and veils of hermetic unfoldings. Mesopotopia is a restless, wrestling, rousing, terracotta (earthen) anti-war warrior.” —Charles Bernstein, author of The Kinds of Poetry I Want

Praise for Anne's previous collection, Trickster Feminism:

“The pervading mood in Trickster Feminism is of a piece with our national mood: gloom-filled, sorrowing, yet occasionally threaded with hope . . . Reading Waldman is like being in the world today.” —New York Times Book Review

“Waldman calls upon multiple resources – spirits, suffragettes, and heroines alike – to help defeat the trickster who disempowers women through capitalism and other tools . . . Waldman presents a complicated panorama of places and events – including resistance after the 2016 U.S. presidential election – in these accomplished, intertwined pieces.” —Washington Post

“Very apropos and very prescient . . . what’s reeling and alive is the freshness of topicality, personal and public, in this collection: ICE and immigration, the DOJ’s current personnel, the Women’s March, Oligarchism and global money laundering, technocracy, ‘Anthropocene weather complexities, nuclear threats, and so on.” —The Brooklyn Rail

“Reads like a spellbook — a mix of prose, verse, illustration and photography, woven together like the instructions to a ritual. But the incantatory poetry of Trickster Feminism is practical magic, Waldman’s way of meditating on — and taking action against — what she says are increasingly difficult times.” —PBS.org

“Waldman’s poems are layered, enchanting, and challenging, but if you’re willing to go along for the ride, their movements will unsettle your thinking on gender, feminism, and the political powers at large in the United States today.” —Tricycle Magazine

Author

© Shannon Sky
Anne Waldman is a revered poet, performer, professor, editor, and cultural activist. She is the author of more than forty-five books, including Gossamurmur, Manatee/Humanity, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, and the feminist epic The Iovis Trilogy, which won the 2012 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry. The recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Waldman makes her home in New York City and in Boulder, Colorado, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Writing and Poetics and artistic director of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University. View titles by Anne Waldman

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