The Czar

by Mary Biddinger, Jay Robinson

The poems of THE CZAR by Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson stand at the intersection of ironic political commentary and hyperbolic body currency. The Czar is an invented figurehead, all ceremony and artificial gestures, but is he provocative humor or allegorical heft? Who is the Czar of the Czar? And what happens when power is passed to the powerless in a secret handshake that’s more tongue on tongue than tongue-in-cheek?

THE CZAR dialogues with classic literature, and in doing so establishes its own neoclassicism. It shifts prosodies and perspectives, offers a revolution instead of a halftime show. It breaks the fourth wall and sits in the audience’s lap. The theater goes quiet, but the lights never dim in the hush. And at the heart of these poems is the rhythm and beat of the present tense, history’s most unreliable narrator, no matter the king or kingdom.

"This book is not a book, it’s treatise on empire, a manifest destiny, a pack of wild peasants outside the gate, a mesmerizing tour d’effluvia in its Czar not Czar, throne not throne, overthrown mistresses, Lady Czar is no Czarina, cappuccino foam isn’t foam, revolution was a hoax, naming and renaming, unlearned cursive, unheard flute solo, empire under construction, not New York, not Sacramento, non-tabloids, non-violent non-women. Biddinger and Robinson rebuild our world and take it away piece by piece to show the conviviality of our destruction." –Elizabeth Colen, author of They Could No Longer Contain Themselves

100 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2016

About the author

Mary Biddinger is a poet and flash fiction writer who lives in Akron, Ohio. Her novella-in-flash, The Girl with the Black Lipstick, was published by Black Lawrence Press in July 2025. She is co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024). Biddinger teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron and in the NEOMFA program.