New Book :: If This Should Reach You In Time

If This Should Reach You In Time
Poetry by Justin Marks
Barrelhouse Books, December 2022

If This Should Reach You in Time sounds the alarm of climate change and democratic collapse with tender lament and guarded hope from award-winning poet Justin Marks. In “Along for the Ride,” Marks writes, “There’s no way around / not being part // of the problem” and “The best case scenario / is long term disaster.” In this fourth collection of poetry, Marks renders global threats as intimate and personal. As we turn inward, terror and sadness take hold. This is a book of crisis and dread, both human and spiritual. Through these poems, Marks shows readers what could be and what might have been. In the titular poem, he writes, “know / that we didn’t see / the disaster coming / That it wasn’t / imaginable, hadn’t / existed until, gradually / it was, and did / Or that we saw it / and refused to believe / Or saw it and thought / something or someone / else would save us.”