Set in the vernacular origins of modernity, Live at the Bitter End puts the racialized logic of 20th century aesthetics on trial. Mixing anonymous voices with the testimonies of figures such as Paul Cezanne, Charles Mingus, Emma Bardac, Erik Satie, Alberto Giacometti, Billie Holiday, Pierre Bonnard, Samuel Beckett, Miles Davis, and others, Ed Pavli weaves a playfully raucous and intimately violent work of satirical force. Adhering to the structure of a murder trial, Live at the Bitter End bears lyrical witness to racial separation, masquerade, mongrelization, and communion to show how those connections (in love, lust, trust and betrayal) sound deep in the textures of who we are.

Author Biography

ED PAVLI is author of seven collections of poems, and a two-time National Poetry Series winner. He has published essays, poems, fiction, and dramatic pieces in numerous magazines and journals, including Boston Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and Callaloo. He is Distinguished Research Professor and teaches in the English department and in the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia.