Lynx House Press (2012)
What Next Old Knife?
Ranging across a diverse contemporary society of night school courses and displaced “adult learners,” concrete apartment blocks full of exiles and economic migrants, to the Iraq War, Germany of the 1930s, Vilna of the 1920s, and medieval Gerona, What Next, Old Knife? is a sobering encounter with class, culture, and history—personal and otherwise.
David Axelrod struggles with how we learn and unlearn our humanity, imagining ways in which individuals and whole societies live with and recover from moral catastrophe.
The collection ends with a long choral poem, a visionary dialogue between the living and the dead who insist that language can resist nihilism, reclaim hope, and enact future accord.
“David Axelrod’s work is deeply informed by history, religion, and culture, but it never loses the music and magic of true poetry. What Next, Old Knife? has an Old World depth and elegance, but also a fresh currency that is wry, often ironic and vividly surprising in the way it discovers new territory. Learned and lyrical, sensuous and cerebral, speaking as sharply, usefully and dangerously as a trusted knife, this is a great book of poetry. ”