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Stay Dead

Stay Dead

by Shapero, Natalie
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9781556597121

*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Longlist*


In Stay Dead, Shapero examines performance, power, comedy, and despair through the lenses of method acting and abstract expressionism.


The politics of labor and performance collide with comedy and tragedy in Natalie Shapero's fourth poetry collection, Stay Dead. Shapero's unflinching poems explore theories of acting, discourses of survival, privacy and publicity, power and punchlines, and the language of despair. This work explores how "your death place / is the birthplace you choose." With appearances by Claude Monet, Mark Rothko, Chris Burden, Studs Terkel, Anthony Bourdain, Gene Kelly, and others, Shapero investigates themes of method acting, abstract expressionism, and the production and commodification of intense expression and raw interiority. She offers sly examinations of labor and housing markets. She interrogates the influence of artists' material conditions on the work they produce and the culture they shape. With a cutting, sardonic voice, Shapero asks what it means to be a working artist under capitalism; which individuals are permitted earnest extensions of the self; and "whether being born is worth it."

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Product details

Pub dateSep 9, 2025
ISBN-101556597126
ISBN-139781556597121
LanguageEnglish
Last updated 2026-08-29 00:23
$12.09 $17.00 28% off
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