Poems of New York

From Walt Whitman's ""Mannahatta"" to Ted Berrigan's ""Whitman in Black"" and beyond to Hettie Jones's ""Dust A Survival Kit, Fall 2001,"" Poems of New York collects poetic responses to Gotham's many facets. Selected and edited by Open City contributing editor and New York Times Book Review poetry reviewer Elizabeth Schmidt, the more than 125 poems here tend toward less familiar works from familiar names. Instead of Frank O'Hara's ""A Step Away from Them"" we get ""Steps"" (""all I want is a room up there/ and you in it"") though Auden's ""September 1, 1939"" and Williams's famous ""The Great Figure"" the figure `5' glimpsed on a fire truck are here. As Schmidt notes in her introduction, ""Poets who have written about New York are masters at preserving, and allowing us to cherish, moments of life in this theater of chance and change.""