Elegies From the Last Days of the Empire Paperback – March 4, 2026

“Everything is dwindling,” Jan Worth writes in this remarkable book. And she looks clear-eyed at plague and political pestilence, at the illnesses of friends and family, at her own aging. Worth uses her direct, unadorned yet evocative language to find ways to continue: “I say I love you. / We are still here.” She convinces us that a bowl of peaches “at the Olympic Grille” can teach her “how this was a good day all day because of / what there is sometimes in the world.” This is a gift to us.—Keith Taylor, author, What Can the Matter BeRead Jan Worth’s fierce and tender poems aloud. Feel how the words shape your tongue and resonate in your ears. Notice the way the music and images ignite your imagination. Elegies From the Last Days of the Empire is superb company for a break from resisting. Read it without pausing, beginning to end. You’ll carry away seeds for the next great thing, for your next great thing.—Alison Swan, author, A Fine CanopySometimes, poetry speaks to the tumult of our times, which is what Jan Worth accomplishes in Elegies From the Last Days of the Empire. She is “at an age / when questions fill / every room,” and when “It’s time to give up thinking / of eternity.” These poignant poems touch on COVID, childhood, world chaos, Xanax, aging spouses, and much more. Despite the subtle, daily terrors of life, Jan Worth is somehow able to find a world that is “still / beautiful tonight.” And we thank her for that.—David James, author, A Day Without FearElegies From the Last Days of the Empire reminded me first of Brecht’s famous answer that “Yes, there will be singing. / About the dark times.” And singing there is in these resilient poems, but an even better touchstone for Worth’s clear-eyed meditations and explorations of life under duress would, I believe, be Keats’s “vale of Soul-making.” Humble, curious, honest in the face of crumbling empire and “glum outrage” every “frightening day,” Jan Worth’s deeply felt, closely observed poems (especially the stunning sequence “Lyrics Collected from the Plague”) turn quotidian events into guides for survival and self-knowledge. Worth doesn’t shrink from asking “Who am I?” It’s the reader’s reward to find her answer in poem after courageous poem.—Dr. Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk, author, One Less River and Maumee, Maumee Read more