The Vestiges

“a masterful collection of long research poems, two of which have wildly incongruent commitments to having a knowable speaker … In the end, Derksen puts the reader in the vestiges of hope.”
– Canadian Literature

“As all that is solid melts into liquidity, Jeff Derksen’s poetry provides footholds of humor, criticism, stealth analysis, and wild observation to address neoliberalism’s violent wake. With ‘expansive authority’ he reveals Marx as teacher, as worker, as conversationalist, and exposes what’s silhouetted in the glare of vagabond capitalism. The Vestiges is a beautiful, compelling, and even dangerous book.”
– Cindi Katz

“Today the world exploded. Drones fell from the sky onto random targets, news stations went black, pepper spray burned our eyes. Who’s up for documenting the new rubble? For those of us hunkered down in the poetry corner of the universe, Jeff Derksen has been our man. He sits behind a common desk of particulars as an architect of data: distilling facts, designing hard poems that trace our desperate history of greed. These are The Vestiges and, indeed, ‘the idea of the north just shifted north.’”
– Robert Fitterman