{"product_id":"03-21-2022-proceed-to-check-out-by-alan-shapiro","title":"Shapiro, Alan: Proceed to Check Out","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eUniversity of Chicago Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePublication Date: March 25, 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePublisher Market: Award-winning poet Alan Shapiro offers a new collection of poems reflecting on mortality and finitude.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAlan Shapiro’s fourteenth collection of poetry, \u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eProceed to Check Out\u003c\/i\u003e, is a kind of summing up, or stock-taking, by an aging poet, of his precarious place in a world dominated by the ever-accelerating pace of technological innovation, political disruption, personal loss, and racial strife. These poems take on fundamental subjects—like the nature of time and consciousness and how or why we become who we are—but Shapiro presses them into becoming urgent and timely.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEmploying idiomatic range and formal variety, Shapiro’s poems move through recurring dreams, the coercions of childhood, and the mysterious connections of mind and matter, pleasure and memory. They meet an abiding need to find empathy and understanding in even the most challenging places—amid disaffection, public discord, and estrangement. His grasp of contemporary life—in all its insidious violence and beauty—is distinct, comprehensive, and profound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39521695432727,"sku":"9780226817545","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/9780226817545_cf80f.jpg?v=1637717698","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/03-21-2022-proceed-to-check-out-by-alan-shapiro","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}