Mesopotopia explores the vast sweep of our accelerating, precipitous world. From the cradle to the grave, from the mysterious poetic origins of Mesopotamia to our own dystopias of the twenty-first century, Anne Waldman crafts a singular, radical investigation into the syncretic layers of quantum space and dreamtime. She invokes “studying” as the most compelling ritual and tool for evolution and travels to various fellaheen worlds, treading metabolic pathways and ancient “antitheses realities,” and gleans sacred texts that speak urgently through the transports and telepathies of poetry. Troubadour dawn songs, pyramid texts, Buddhist mantras, canonical hours of Judeo-Christian tradition, Persian prayers, Druid sorcery, and the wild, gnarly syntax and modal structure of Waldman’s particular performative passion and wit are all conjured here.

What emerges is a meditation on the salient words of the French poet Antonin Artaud contemplating the destruction and rubble post–World War II: “We are not yet born, we are not yet in the world, there is not yet a world, things have not been made, the reason for being has not yet been found.” Mesopotopia—mythic maelstrom, rhythmic rite of passage, protolanguage trance dance—moves toward release and gnosis.

“This is one of the most complicated times to speak of harmony. Hard to put aside, ignore. Trying to make an inventory of experience, consciousness, impressions, struggles, emotions, loss of reason, ethical and moral calamity to make sense of this time…. A tall order for a book of poetry I had envisioned for quite a while, feeling the urgency of completing it during the time frame of 2025…. Thus, Mesopotopia was a way to cope and expand and release my burning cri de coeur.”
—Anne Waldman in the interview, “The roles of language in ritual & tradition” in Interlocutor by Isabelle Sakelaris, Feb 11, 2026

“Anne Waldman has written a new book that searches out the value of the imagination amidst imminent global catastrophe and ultimately teaches readers to work, build something of human value, as our world collapses. Mesopotopia undertakes a poetics of immersive, overwhelming world-historical awareness, and what emerges is a grounding human vision for the work of poets and artists, work which turns out to be surprisingly indispensable…. Waldman’s work is one of the great achievements of contemporary writing. Her poetry is always bright, prismatically intelligent, tough as nails, and full of glee, questioning, rage, love, sorrow, and visions of how we and she could be truer than we are.”
—Hannah Burns for The Brooklyn Rail, Mar 2026

“To understand the radiance of the poetry world you have to look at Anne. In Mesopotopia I’m struck by the fact she is such a good writer, her tone so rich & embodied, so frank you could hang anything on it and she does—in a moment when nobody knows what to do Anne extends us this canny oracular, a streaming prayer cobbled from every direction – in a grown up in NYC way, Mesopotopia is today’s lucky read, gorgeous and full.”
—Eileen Myles

“The poem as an archive of histories and myths, an outlet for political rage, an inscape of universal compassion, a score for performance, an account of things touched and seen and dreamed, an atlas of the natural world, the language of a tribe: for sixty years, Anne Waldman has been taking us to what poetry was meant to be.”
—Eliot Weinberger

“Anne Waldman’s Mesopotopia unfolds in layered, palimpsestic compositions, forming potent murmurations of language: coordinated, shape-shifting, and spectacular. With an epic vision, these poems address complex themes, dreaming and unraveling threads of history and myth. It’s an enveloping performance, an urgent invocation. An utterly astonishing collection.”
—Hoa Nguyen

“Shattered light in search of sprung lyric: with boundless energy, Anne Waldman has forged an epochal poem in the seams and veils of hermetic unfoldings. Mesopotopia is a restless, wrestling, rousing, terracotta (earthen) anti-war warrior.”
—Charles Bernstein