The City, Our City

FINALIST FOR THE WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS AWARD

A breakout collection that showcases the voice of a young poet striking out, dramatically, emphatically, to stake his claim on "the City"-an unnamed, crowded place filled with gunmen, lovers, children, neighbors, builders, soldiers, professors, bouncers, and widowers.

In this series of semi-mythologized, symbolic narratives interspersed with dramatic monologues, Wayne Miller presents a city laden with "kisses in doorways, weapons / and sculptures, concerts / and fistfights, sex toys and votives, / engines and metaphors." And yet the City, both unidentifiable and readily familiar, is also a place where the human questions and observations found in almost any city-past, present, and future-ring out with urgency.

These poems-in turn elegiac, celebratory, haunting, grave, and joyful-give hum to our modern experience, to all those caught up in the City's immensity.