Stay Dead - by Natalie Shapero (Paperback)

About the Book

"A collection of poems by Natalie Shapero"--

Book Synopsis

*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Longlist*

In Stay Dead, Shapero examines performance, power, comedy, and despair through the lenses of method acting and abstract expressionism.

The politics of labor and performance collide with comedy and tragedy in Natalie Shapero's fourth poetry collection, Stay Dead. Shapero's unflinching poems explore theories of acting, discourses of survival, privacy and publicity, power and punchlines, and the language of despair. This work explores how "your death place / is the birthplace you choose." With appearances by Claude Monet, Mark Rothko, Chris Burden, Studs Terkel, Anthony Bourdain, Gene Kelly, and others, Shapero investigates themes of method acting, abstract expressionism, and the production and commodification of intense expression and raw interiority. She offers sly examinations of labor and housing markets. She interrogates the influence of artists' material conditions on the work they produce and the culture they shape. With a cutting, sardonic voice, Shapero asks what it means to be a working artist under capitalism; which individuals are permitted earnest extensions of the self; and "whether being born is worth it."

Review Quotes

Praise for Stay Dead

"Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero assumes apocalyptic means and their strange depictions, including American capitalism. Spanning the necessity of performance, the guarding of art, and the ubiquity of plastics, Shapero's poems never relax, never let up. As in high comedy, what can be perceived as breaks are not minor lines but controlled moments that build tension towards where attention leads next."--Poetry Northwest, Favorites Autumn 2025

"A darkly witty meditation on mortality."--Guardian

"There's chaos in Natalie Shapero's 2025 National Book Award-longlisted poetry collection Stay Dead--chaos that reflects the modern political and social world to which she's responding. In one poem, 'Nightstand, ' the speaker looks to finally read a book about trauma and recovery, but is constantly interrupted by tornado drills, her dog, her doorbell, and several other small and large violations. The tension rises, and the ironic poem ultimately ends before the chaos can settle, leaving readers to sit with that discomfort. Shapero's speaker often defies conventions of grammar, embodying chaos on the phrase level. 'Bandages stocked in the padlocked aisle, claim denial, bird spikes, rent hikes, ' Shapero lists in another poem, then asks, 'Why wouldn't I want more of what God made?' Her humor is balanced by earnestness--musing on whether being born is 'worth it, ' while in the same breath taking seriously what it means to be a writer in our tumultuous time: 'I had to make sure/ I would not leave the world with my feelings/ unfinished.'"--Rebecca Schneid, Time Magazine 100 Must-Read Books of 2025

"It's good to laugh when the world is crumbling--maybe it's even better to laugh about the crumbling of the world. 'I had to make sure/ I would not leave the world with my feelings/ unfinished, ' writes Natalie Shapero in a book about death that is nonetheless exuberant. Gathering images from the products and the practices of film, of visual art, Shapero claws her way word-by-electric-word through troubles both personal and public. These poems often seem to start by giving up, but they find their way to something that is, if not hope, then a kind of determined cousin to it: 'I was trying/ not to die. I'LL DIE WHEN I'M DEAD.'"--Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR "Books We Love 2025"

Praise for Natalie Shapero

"These poems are as witty as they are wise. . . . If you can't shake the absurdity of contemporary society, Popular Longing will feel like home."--The New York Public Library

"These poems feel chatty, associative, almost tossed off despite their sonic tightness, carefully arranged to sound improvised. Shapero aspires to replace the obvious architectonics of other poetry with her own appalled, off-the-cuff humour."--Stephanie Burt, London Review of Books

"Shapero's humor generally derives from dark places, as in her tendency toward self-deprecation . . . and amid unusually lithe movements, Shapero demonstrates an ability to follow observations to unexpected ends."--Publishers Weekly

"These poems are taut and controlled, while appearing to make effortless leaps and connections."--Timothy Otte, Adroit Journal

"Shapero writes in an urgent vernacular that flirts, stings, implores, and demands with apparent abandon. But no matter how breathless or casual they may seem on the page, her poems are carefully constructed engines of contemplation."--Joseph Campana, Houston Chronicle

About the Author

Natalie Shapero is the author of the poetry collections Popular Longing (Copper Canyon, 2021), Hard Child (Copper Canyon, 2021), and No Object (Saturnalia, 2013), as well as the pamphlet Today Hamlet (Out-Spoken, 2023). Her writing has appeared in The London Review of Books, Granta, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her awards include a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, a finalist designation from the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and an Assets for Artists residency fellowship from The Studios at MassMOCA. A former civil-rights lawyer, she works as an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. She lives in Los Angeles.