Fuck Death
© 2025 by Mark Sargent
ISBN-13: 978-1-944234-63-8
Paperback | 6" x 9" | 86 pages
Mark Sargent's Fuck Death is an honest portrayal of aging, of the lost days and nights of youth, the degenerate state of the world. And yet he escapes the trappings of the maudlin and the nostalgic, offering instead a sardonic grin and wink at the absurdist beauty in the mundane. Sargent is a modern-day Hesiod and this collection of poems another entry in his Works & Days. He may not be a farmer, or raise sheep, but these poems admonish us to live right here and now, accept fate without self-reproach, and calmly say....Fuck Death.
“I think Mark Sargent means his title literally. There is no exclamation point after that cheeky pronouncement, so he’s not really launching an insult at the Great Mystery. He’s just urging the reader of these lyrically grown-up poems to go ahead and fuck death. It’s up to Reader to take on this activity. I would personally rather fuck a sheep than relaunch the founding myth of Romania, but, hey there are all kind of poetry-loving fools out there. No matter what kind you are, taste Sargent’s poetry brews—they are strong!”
—Andrei Codrescu