Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights by Andrew Rihn uses 100-word prose poems to immerse us into the fifty-eight professional fights of Mike Tyson. The voice of an Old Testament prophet shines through the fight commentary, and relates Tyson to a modern-day Elijah—climbing the mountain to do battle, and climbing back down to a world of depression, anxiety, and alienating silence. Rihn’s poems are masterfully crafted, and his language is stunning in its elegance.

Tyson vs. Mercedes 

Mar 6, 1985 

Plaza Convention Center, Albany, New York, U.S. 

Mike Tyson comes into the ring already warmed up, already shadowboxing. The start of something: existential. But also, after the finish: history. Or also again: dramatic irony. The camera records, documents: produces records, documents. When Mike Tyson touches gloves, he nearly bows. The men are as tall as statues that have not yet been pulled down. Mercedes crumbles rather than falls, fading like a camera out of focus, blurred. Down on one knee, the fight is ended: this end is also a beginning. Something new has entered the world. Mike Tyson rushes over, palms up, as if almost to apologize.

PRAISE FOR REVELATION: AN APOCALYPSE IN FIFTY-EIGHT FIGHTS

Sonically powerful and careful in their word choice and imagery, these poems send readers careening into the storm that was Mike Tyson’s turbulent professional boxing career. Andrew Rihn’s Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights captures the pathos of each and every Tyson bout. This collection of masterfully crafted poems will undoubtedly appeal to both pugilists and poets alike. Rihn’s poems, powerful and compact, mirror the fighting style of his muse.

—Todd Snyder, author of 12 Rounds in Lo’s Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia and Bundini: Don’t Believe the Hype

In prose poems shaped like the squared ring, Rihn offers a portrait of a complex, confounding figure. Here Mike Tyson is an “explosion posing as a man,” although he starts the book as a penitent: he “rushes over, palms up, as if almost to apologize.” Rihn’s concision creates his precision; in poems that are a tight amalgam of theology, biblical reference, and the detritus of violent sport, Rihn creates a fascinating new poetic myth.

—Nick Ripatrazone, Culture Editor of Image, and author of Longing for an Absent God

Andrew Rihn’s stunning Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights is breathtaking in its power and vision. Both vivid portrait of Mike Tyson—man, myth, monster—and allegory of the human life cycle, Rihn’s collection is so biblical in its telling it will have you on your knees admitting the heavens. Because Revelation is beyond boxing, beyond blood. It’s Christ and His temptation, angels vs. demons, Zeus chaining tortured Prometheus—it’s the story of Man distilled to fifty-eight visceral, surgically rendered knockout blows in which “the ring is a desert on smelted pillars where the devil is both loosed and contained.”

—Philip Elliott, Editor in Chief of Into the Void and author of Nobody Move