Psalms for the Wreckage

Drama. Poetry. PSALMS FOR THE WRECKAGE collects Joshua Young’s trilogy of scripts in verse–To the Chapel of Light (Mud Luscious Press, 2012), WHEN THE WOLVES QUIT (Gold Wake Press, 2012), and a third, previously unpublished play in verse, This is the Way to Rule–in a single edition. Exploring faith, dogma, and the politics of power, PSALMS FOR THE WRECKAGE is a stunning collection of poetic, epistolary playwriting as well as a fascinating look at one author’s evolving relationship with genre.

Who are the characters in Joshua Young’s PSALMS FOR THE WRECKAGE? Probably places. Probably ghost towns, silos or churches, probably ‘just the stretch of highway and grain, and maybe dead grass’ that ‘leads to sin or Arkansas.’ The survivor sounds of these sites travel, ‘Memphis-bound and gagged, ’ by wrenching epistle and sundered imagism through a landscape of ongoing apocalypse. There’s an ‘ark in a middle of a field stacked full of rocks and newspapers.’ There’s a place where ‘you might wave a cigarette around like a roman candle or a fishing pole.’ In reminding us that the interior may be everywhere, that all scenes might already be deleted, Young’s plays offer a travel guide to ‘parts of America no one gives a fuck about’ and to the unquiet beauty that washes its creases with dust.–Zach Savich