City of the Big Shoulders
An Anthology of Chicago Poetry
by edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave
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Pub Date Apr 01 2012 | Archive Date Dec 18 2012
Description
The cultural, ethnic, and aesthetic diversity in this gathering of poems springs from a variety of viewpoints, styles, and voices as multifaceted and energetic as the city itself. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz: "I want to eat / in a city smart enough to know that if you / are going to have that heart attack, you might / as well have the pleasure of knowing // you've really earned it"; Renny Golden: "In the heat of May 1937, my grandfather / sits in the spring grass of an industrial park / with hundreds of striking steelworkers"; Joey Nicoletti: "The wind pulls a muscle / as fans yell the vine off the outfield wall, / mustard-stained shirts, hot dog smiles, and all."
The combined energies of these poems reveal the mystery and beauty that is Second City, the City by the Lake, New Gotham, Paris on the Prairie, the Windy City, the Heart of America, and Sandburg's iconic City of the Big Shoulders.
Ryan G. Van Cleave is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of nineteen books including poetry, young adult fiction, and nonfiction. With Virgil Suárez, he is the editor of the poetry anthologies Red, White, and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America (Iowa, 2004), Vespers: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality (Iowa, 2003), Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America (Iowa, 2002), and American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement (Iowa, 2001).
Advance Praise
"‘When
a nation goes down or a society perishes, one condition can always be
found-they forgot where they came from,' cautioned Chicago icon Carl
Sandburg, whose acute historical consciousness pervades this timely
anthology. From the stockyard to the speakeasy, the steakhouse to the
flophouse, the top of the Hancock tower to the thirteenth floor of an
east-side tenement, what this eclectic gathering of poets shares is a
commitment to honoring Chicago's roots. Infused with a passion beyond
the reach of prose, here is an ‘intimate ethnography'-part torch song,
part folk song, part ballad, part dirge-of a city both ‘on the make' and
‘on the take.'"-Suzanne Buffam, author, The Irrationalist
"A city like Chicago deserves an anthology of this scope: bursting with the life lived on the streets in the Loop and alive with childhood memories as seen from the city's neighborhood windows. Ryan Van Cleave has collected a prodigious swath of poems from writers commemorating their Chicago, a city as big in our imaginations as it is from the view at Promontory Point Park."-Joshua Marie Wilkinson, author, Selenography
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781609380908 |
| PRICE | $19.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 192 |
