Zach Savich's fourth book of poetry, Century Swept Brutal, offers a rapt and restless meditation on what Oppen called “the world, weather-swept with which / one shares the century.” In a landscape of on-ramps, mysterious lakes, disgraced social studies teachers, and signs blazing between “hot” and “dog,” these poems seek out their country’s real name while exiled within it. Century Swept Brutal presents the lyrical intelligence and singular observations we have come to expect from Savich's work—but here they carry the strange complexity of fake blood made of real saliva.
