The Last Song of the World

This title is available for pre-order and will ship on it's publication date: November 5th 2024.

Joseph Fasano’s The Last Song of the World delves into the chaos of the modern world, and searches for resilience in the face of environmental and societal devastation. Dripping with images of ancient ruins and mythological figures, these poems serve as vignettes of fatherhood, love, and desire against the backdrop of apocalyptic events.

Through the documentation of ongoing violence and natural phenomena, Fasano depicts the ever-present anxieties of parenting with concision and compassion. The Last Song of the World is a love letter to the world that could be—a world as tender as it is bold, as loving as it is brutal, as beautiful as it is horrendous. 

Words Found in the Rubble After the Last War

Yes, we lived in a time of darkness
and did nothing.

Yes, we looked up and we saw
the sky on fire,
and we knew that we had made the flames
with our own hands.

Yes, we wasted every breath
on rage.

Children, if any of you have survived this,
start again
with the simplest things, we beg you.

Walk out through the garden of the darkness
and touch each other’s faces
in the morning air.

Slowly. Slowly. Say each other’s names.

Praise for The Last Song of the World 

“Give a copy of Joseph Fasano’s The Last Song of the World to someone who loves poetry, then give another copy to someone who says they don’t ‘get’ poetry, someone who thinks of it as a lush garden concealed behind a locked gate. There is no gate here. In writing clearly and evocatively about the human experience, Fasano has invited us all inside.”

 —Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Elemental and eloquent in their quest for heart-truths, Joseph Fasano’s lucid, almost-transparent poems have the beauty of a questing imagination, alert and aware on its earnest journey through this world.”

—Gregory Orr, author of Poetry as Survival 

“Joseph Fasano's poems have always been necessary and full of the world. They are even more so in this new collection, which is for anyone who has ever been in trouble and needed a path to the way out. This is it.” 

—Alex Dimitrov, author of Love and Other Poems