{"product_id":"9781935218425","title":"Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom Author:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe general theme of this book, and a number of its individual poems, is that love and language create community. There is little self-reference and confession—or only when I couldn’t help it. Set in Gloucester, New York, or Paris, in Panama or Newtown, the poems come from a commitment to civic poetry, a poetry of social place and witness. I am deeply thankful to the citizens of Gloucester, Massachussetts, for the honor of serving as Poet Laureate of such a wonderful city. During my term, a strong belief in civic poetry grew stronger.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e By civic poetry, I mean poems written for the public on community topics. I mean poetry accessible to an attentive, general audience. And since it is often meant to be read in public, I mean poetry that relies on sound and familiar forms: rhyming tricks, assonance, consonance, regular rhythms, refrain and stanza, couplets, the workhorse sonnet, etc. And of course, civic poetry, like all poetry, is insightful, well-crafted and fresh, never talks down, and is never watered down.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Besides accessibility, sound, rhythm, and freshness, there is another necessary ingredient in civic poetry: hope. Not innocent or immature hope, nothing naive. It may be a battered hope, even diminished, but is not cowed or faint, remains brassy, unabashed. Civic poetry makes no apologies for believing in our stressed and distorted, but wonderful national experiment.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Backwaters Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47033694650608,"sku":"9781935218425","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781935218425_p0.jpg?v=1763656363","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781935218425","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}