Bill Lavender's city of god is a poetic reading-through of St. Augustine's magnum opus with comparisons to contemporary American life and politics. This book-length, 300+ page poem, described as a "monumental epic" by Adeena Karasick and "a masterpiece" by Cynthia Hogue, uses Augustine's reflections on the sacking of Rome by Alaric in 410 to reflect on the attempted insurrection in Washington in 2021 and other aspects, both personal and political, of the modern world, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the history of slavery in the U.S., and the daily struggle of homeless people in the poet's city of New Orleans. Other poets have compared the work to models as diverse as Dante and Dave Chappelle, Pound's Cantos and the great Roman satires of Juvenal and Martial.