The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Perfect Paperback)

~ Allegrezza (Author), Allegrezza and Bianchi (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

When Carl Sandburg asked in his Chicago Poems , close to a hundred years ago, for "a voice to speak to me in the day end, / A hand to touch me in the dark room / Breaking the long loneliness," little did he know his city would be so fully and lovingly answered and so honored. Chicago is once again transformed by poetry. Here in these myriad acts of imagination, the poets of The City Visible give to it again, in Shakespeare's terms, "a local habitation and a name." --Peter Gizzi

Product Description

An anthology of some of the best new poets in Chicago. Edited by poets Raymond Bianchi and William Allegrezza.

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 251 pages
• Publisher: Cracked Slab Books; 1st edition (May 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978644018
• ISBN-13: 978-0978644017
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,362,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chicago A to Z, September 20, 2007

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Anthologies are tricky beasts, since readers will always pan in on what's wrong with them. BAY POETICS for example does a lovely job of presenting a farflung panoply of Bay Area writers, but some have nevertheless complained that it's clubby, too consistent. Chicago-based poets William Allegrezza and Ray Bianchi have complicated their own job by re-imagining their subject in various ways, stretching it to the bonds of plausibility. Do we think of "Chicago" as including Milwaukee, Madison and "a few other places"? Eking out the face of Chicago poetry by co-opting the poets of other states and cities seems to me, at first glance, like the trick of the week. Figuring Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff as Chicago poets, when we have come to think of them as among our favorite San Francisco writers, again extends the nature of "Chicago" along different lines--timelines--as though to say, once you lived here, you will always have a bit of us in your writing, sort of like homeopathy in a glass.

Go figure. Heartfelt thanks, however, are owed editors A and B for their labors in bringing this marvelous volume together. I don't know when I've seen so many poets new to me in one place before--and have all of them be so good (or if not "good," precisely, then intriguing in exemplary ways). Just when I think I have "Chicago" figured out, another flash of color enters the frame, distracting my fixity, recharging the battery. Kaleidoscopically, THE CITY VISIBLE gives us the literary scene in continually changing units tumbling down on each other. Lea Graham's beautiful poem "The Rushing" might serve as its signature, with its rapidfire images of flowers spotted from a moving, "reluscent car, past already--/ so brilliant/ a wanting/ / and yet."

More "language-y" than we had taken Chicago writing to be from our aimless perusals of CHICAGO REVIEW's recursive, lambent Anglophilia, the poetry here comes in little, if well-chosen, bits and pieces. No author gets more than 9 or 10 pages, generous I guess, but sometimes frustrating--as some get as little as 1 or 2. Oddly there's nothing from two of my favorites, Mary Margaret Sloan and David Trinidad. Perhaps there was some editorial indecision about their status as Chicagoans? Quite often in anthologies, some great figures simply slip through the cracks. Related to the omission of Trinidad, perhaps, is the pervasive fear of poetry's comic spirit in the anthology. "Super-serious" might be its watchword, but then again, one never got many laughs from Robert Duncan or Ronald Johnson, who might be considered this volume's spiritual predecessors. The title itself--"The City Visible"--has that Duncan ring that makes one giggle a little.

Unveiling an entire new poetic culture may seem like the act of a master magician, but Allegrezza and Bianchi have been on the case a long time and they know what they're doing. Volume Two is said to be in the works, and in the meantime I for one will be ordering several copies of Volume One for students, friends, and family relations. When young poets ask me, where should I go, what should I do, nowadays I always say pull out a map, throw in a dart. X marks the spot, but Chicago is the most exciting scene around. Years from now we'll be looking back at the early 21st century and wishing we'd all relocated there at this time in poetry history. "Zigzag is the mind's progress," as Paul Hoover wrote, *perhaps* in Chicago, "and stabs at every tree" ("Poetics, page 143).

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book , September 12, 2007

By	Raymond L. Bianchi (Oak Park, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This Book was Edited by William Allegrezza and Raymond Bianchi

Our goal was to bring together poets from all over Chicago who are in dialogue with each other. I think we have achieved that feat.