Year of the Ox

Andrew Brooks's Year of the Ox is a constellation of images that chart the movement of history, not with the logic of linear progress but the dialectic of historical materialism. The poem takes what has been and flashes it together with the now, with blackberries, garden spiders, broccoli pasta, and much else.

Through this constellation, we see, in silhouette, the historical shape of capitalism and its necessary mutation, imperialism. In a time of "No/politics but the politics of real/estate", the two long poems in this book offer us something rare: political poetry that moves, and demands movement.

— Andre Dao