Fear of Subways by Maureen SeatonThe Eighth Mountain Press, 1991

Sometimes this book seemed dated: not just because New York in 1991 was a different place from New York in 2000, in 2005, but maybe also because’s of Seaton’s particular politics and experiences, her life and her anger and the shit she had to deal with on a daily basis because of who she loved, shit I haven’t had to deal with. That said, this book grew on me: these poems with all their city-details, with phrases like “East Village cafés/spilling, impatient, onto Spring sidewalks;/a soprano with no hands in Central Park.”