Exploring the themes of friendship and love, these poems capture the vibrant energy of change experienced while walking through New York City. The verses reflect the unique experiences and emotions tied to urban life, inviting readers to engage with the dynamic atmosphere of the city.
-Culled from Dia Art Foundation's -Readings in Contemporary Poetry- series, this anthology includes ninety-four poets who have participated in the reading series from 2010 to 2016. Edited by poet and author Vincent Katz, the book stresses the experimental aspects of contemporary poetic practice, highlighting commonalities among poets and placing their diverse voices in conversation with one another---
Friendship, love, and the potential energy of change animate these poems of walking through New York City. "I love the vibrant cinematic hunger of this book, its urbanity, yours and mine too.” —Eileen Myles Broadway, the famous artery, both off the grid and definitive of Manhattan as it cuts its way downtown, is a metaphor for Katz's path through these poems. From Lincoln Plaza on the Upper West Side to the African Burial Ground and the courthouses downtown, Katz mines his native city for the deep humanity that undergirds its streets. His title, with its implication that one could give something as large and undefinable as Broadway to a single person, courts an impossibility that generates the possibility of friendship, as well as the largesse Katz wants to find in our civic discourse. In poems such as "Ivanka Skirting" and "This Beautiful Bubble" we encounter his reckoning with a divisive culture that can, he suggests, be healed through our daily acts--through a kind of alert graciousness that also defines his poetry. In this moving collection, we enter Katz's world, both public and private, and experience poetry as a way of seeing that can change hearts and minds.