Reading The Book of Jade | Alexandria
Read The Book of Jade by David Park Barnitz. Delving into death-obsessed verses from a 19-year-old Harvard poet who died young, The Book of Jade shatters Victorian conventions with stark nihilism and morbid beauty. Barnitz's radical rejection of hope and meaning shocked 1901 readers but eerily foreshadowed modern existential angst. His poems reveal how embracing darkness can paradoxically illuminate life's most vital truths.