Love in the Last Days

“Nurkse’s reimagining makes for beautiful verse . . . The lines are lovely, the lovers are doomed, the legend lives, and then you’re sitting in an empty L train at Eighth Avenue long after the doors have opened to release you.” —Julia Berick, The Paris Review

“Brims with surprise and necessity . . . Inventive, fully imagined, beautifully written . . . Fresh and new, even as it stands in the tradition of the myth with its numerous historic reinventions: [Nurkse’s] portrayal of the lovers is for our time.” —Gardner McFall, American Book Review

“[Resonates] with subtlety and texture . . . From the tale’s medieval texts Nurkse gathered a rich harvest of terms whose evocative, quasimagical powers mingle with modern words and syntax. By turns lyrical and crude, noble and prosaic, even vulgar, this baroque language sets off illuminating details while reconceptualizing reality.” —World Literature in Review, Alice-Catherine Carls

“From long, discursive lines to centered stanzas to concrete and prose poems, the variety of styles keeps the collection lively . . . Nurkse makes the specific experience of these two lovers new.” —Lisa Ampleman, The Kenyon Review

“Nurkse proves a masterful storyteller, rendering this 900-year-old legend thrilling and urgent . . . in poems resembling a richly woven tapestry or a tempered pane of stained glass.” —Diego Báez, Booklist

“Nurkse makes this familiar story something alien, new, and fascinating; like the potion that Tristan and Iseult share, it’s easy to fall under his spell.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Moving . . . Deeply rooted in the oldest surviving literary versions of the tale . . . Certain to be of interest to Nurkse’s readership and fans of Arthurian and medieval legend.” —Graham Christian, Library Journal