it was today

In praise of Andrei Codrescu’s poetry, Harper’s says “his command of language is superb, his writing beautifully original, and his insights piercing.” Part genius, part tongue-in-cheek provocateur, Codrescu is an audacious and passionate poet whose new work is the perfect tonic for America’s political, literary, and cultural hangovers. The heart of Codrescu’s first new collection in nearly a decade is a beautiful conceit containing the “recently discovered” correspondence between a warrior and a courtesan in fourteenth-century China. The rest of it was today contains poems about modern life and millennial malaise that are both unsparing and intimate, inventive and playful.