On January 6, 2021 — election certification day, the day of the Capitol insurrection — Bill Lavender opened Saint Augustine's City of God and began to write. He did not stop until the next election certification day, 1,461 days later.
city of god is the book-length poem that resulted: a day-by-day encounter, composed as a “distracted reading of a dubious translation” of Augustine's fifth-century defense of Christianity against the charge that it had brought about the sacking of Rome. Section by section, the poem plays the saint's text against present times, revealing the polemic that drives both. Across four years of pop culture and ancient history, the poem gathers their synchronicities: Christian Nationalism, Abraham's wives, TikTok, the rape of the Sabine women, the Q conspiracy, the septuagint scandal, the war in Ukraine, the sacking of Rome by Alaric in 410, and New Orleans with its parades and its homeless, like the one-armed beggar woman who greets the poet mornings at his car, and tries to convert him to Jesus.
“city of god stands as one of the richest, most experimental and authentic chronicles of our time.”
Rodrigo Toscano, author of WHITMAN.CANNONBALL.PUEBLA.“Lavender writes with rage and empathy into his own, and his nation's, last days.”
Susan M. Schultz, author of I and Eucalyptus“A wonderful antidote to the delirium of our epoch — a model of how to stay alive, present, and creative under pressure.”
Laura Mullen, author of EtC“Serious political poetry, not slogan-ridden protest… it wields both scorn and deep insight, reviving the spirit of the great satirists — Juvenal, Martial & Co.”
John Taylor, author of What Comes from the Night“In place of a pontificating saint we have a plain-speaking New Orleans poet reflecting, soberly and gorgeously, on a world again at the brink. A truly astonishing work.”
Norman Fischer, author of There was a clattering as…“A dexterously textural, poignantly pivotal, ‘hurricane of passions.’”
Adeena Karasick, author of Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations“Erudite, jazzy, perhaps sinful, this is the modern polis's earnest riposte to the creator of ‘original sin.’”
Peter Thompson, translator of Fernando Arrabal's Letter to General Franco“No one has ever blended rage and empathy more eloquently.”
Rodney Jones, author of Salvation Blues and Alabama“There are a few books I find so engaging I never want them to end, which was my experience with city of god.... I can hardly think of something of import that you didn't touch on in this book.”
Susanne Dyckman, author of A Dark Ordinary
Bill Lavender is a poet, editor, and publisher who has lived and worked in New Orleans since 1975. He is the founder of Lavender Ink, a press devoted primarily to poetry, and its imprint Diálogos, which publishes mostly literature in translation. He is also co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival.
The author of fourteen books of poetry and a novel, he has spent his career at the intersection of writing, translation, and independent publishing. city of god — written across the four years between the January 6th insurrection and the certification of the 2024 election — is his most ambitious work to date.