If an alien ship came to Earth, would you get on?

In her stunning follow-up to Mr. West, Sarah Blake uses self-consciousness as a tool for transformation. Her fear becomes palpable through the classification of monsters and through violences made real. When the poems find themselves in the domestic realm, something is always under threat. The body is never safe, nor are the ghosts of the dead. But these poems are not about cowering. By detailing the dangers we face as humans, as Americans, especially as women, these poems suggest we might find a way through our anxieties and our injuries. Read a starred review from Publishers Weekly here.

“When Sarah Blake says Let’s Not Live on Earth, it’s not whimsy, it’s vision. Her poems of suburban domesticity pushed to the breaking point give way to a genuinely fearsome feminist epic with the prescience of science fiction and the savagery of poetry.”—Kathleen Ossip, author of The Do-Over and The Cold War 

“Sarah Blake breaks her heart open for us in Let’s Not Live on Earth by writing what being inside and outside the body is as simultaneity. I am jarred out of my own angle and what I’ve always known about bodies becomes uncanny.”—Carmen Giménez Smith, author of Milk and Filth

Let’s Not Live on Earth came out in December 2017 from Wesleyan University Press—available now at Barnes&Noble and other retailers. Or find it at a library. The cover features a painting by Nicky Arscott. Follow the links below to poems in the collection.

Three poems in the January/February issue of American Poetry Review

Neutron Star in Kenyon Review

For Max in The Rumpus

Featured at Verse Daily, Rats in West Branch

Three poems and an interview in Connotation Press

Two poems in Horsethief

(one is featured on Lushlife’s interdisciplinary mixtape in support of the ACLU)

Three poems in Storyscape

Three poems in Arsenic Lobster

The beginning of The Starship first appeared in TriQuarterly (with audio recording)

The entirety of The Starship was published in illustrated installments at Berfrois, with enormous gratitude for all of the contributing artists

Praise for The Starship at Queen Mob’s Teahouse

“We’re Getting Older” by Instar (Greg Greenberg, Doug Van Bevers, Aaron Musquiz) with guests: Travis Orbin, Hayato Imanishi, Dan Wieten, and Sarah Blake