Translated by Shorsha Sullivan and published by Shoestring Press as part of a beautifully-designed box set, Z213: Exit, the first volume in Dimitris Lyacos’ three-volume long poem Poena Damni, is a vertiginous work that is at once archetypal, transcendent, and uniquely suited to this particular moment in time. Poised between novella, poem and journal, Z213: Exit tracks a man’s escape from a guarded building and his flight through a nightmarish, seemingly post-apocalyptic landscape. The man carries with him a Bible between whose passages he records his journey, and the text of the poem is a palimpsest of fragments ...