An eclectic collection of poems about New York City.
“New York, the city that never sleeps, contains more light than all the myriad heavens conceived of by its denizens of every possible race, religion, culture, color, and creed combined. All poets are besotted with light: it is the most transformative of all phenomena and we are permanently drunk on it—moon mad, sun blind, star struck.” — from the Foreword by Anne Pierson Wiese
As Shawkat M. Toorawa writes in his preface, “Not every poet loves New York, but each and every one is mesmerized by it.” Indeed, with its protean mix of cultures, languages, natives, transplants, and exiles, New York City seems to exert a special hold over the poetic imagination. The sixty-one poems, extracts of poems, and song lyrics collected here reflect a wide range of responses to New York, both positive and negative, insider and outsider. Arranged in four sections—Morning, Day, Evening, and Night—the collection not only gives the reader the opportunity to experience twenty-four hours in New York through poetry, but also puts poems and poets in conversation, debate, and even occasionally in conflict with one another.
Rather than attempting to be exhaustive or definitive, this volume juxtaposes well-known poets and lyricists such as Maya Angelou, Bob Dylan, Denise Levertov, and Walt Whitman with important and emerging voices such as Valzhyna Mort, Purvi Shah, and Melanie Rehak, as well as poets less frequently included in such anthologies, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Anna Margolin, and Nicanor Parra. The result is a collection of poems that vary in their aesthetics, tone, mood, and subject, and thereby reflect the vexed and manifold nature of their subject—New York, the city that never sleeps.
“Shawkat Toorawa has selected a thrilling chorus of voices, familiar and new, formal and slangy, immigrant and native. A perfect companion for your day or night on the town.” — Robyn Creswell, poetry editor of The Paris Review
“A strength of this collection is its rich mix of female and male poets, and its wide range of demographic, racial, linguistic, aesthetic, and other multicultural perspectives across a period of time ranging from the late nineteenth century to our own decade. The poems are as various and full of élan as the city itself.” — Lisa Russ Spaar, editor of All That Mighty Heart: London Poems
“There are almost as many anthologies of New York poems as there are skyscrapers, but in terms of sheer reading pleasure The City That Never Sleeps towers over them all.” — Don Share, Editor, Poetry magazine
Shawkat M. Toorawa is Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at Cornell University. He has written, edited, and translated many books, including the collection of Adonis’s poetry A Time Between Ashes and Roses: Poems.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword Anne Pierson Wise
Preface Shawkat M. Toorawa
New York Valzhyna Mort
MORNING
Awaking in New York Maya Angelou
Dawn in New York Claude McKay
New York at Sunrise Anna Hempstead Branch
Manhattan Dawn (1945) Donald Justice
From “A Grave for New York” Adonis (‘Ali Ahmad Sa‘id)
New York (Office and Denunciation) Federico García Lorca
The morning James Schuyler
Early Morning in July Charles Simic
Sunday Morning Kenneth McClane
West Side Story Sasha Skenderija
Cyclone Stephanie Krueger
Sonnet XXXVI Ted Berrigan
The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) Paul Simon
The Lower East Side of Manhattan Victor Hernández Cruz
DAY
From “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World” Galway Kinnell
From “As Fate Would Have It” Mahmoud Darwish
A Step Away from Them Frank O’Hara
Why I Hate New York Meredith Shepard
August Walk Luis Cabalquinto
Made in India, Immigrant Song #3 Purvi Shah
Resurrection Nicanor Parra
“at the ferocious phenomenon” e. e. cummings
I Had This Dream/the city of shadows Shokry Eldaly
Rain David Semanki
Central Park Robert Lowell
From “Peacocks on Broadway” Durs Grünbein
Summer Solstice, New York City Sharon Olds
The Mexican Cabdriver’s Poem for His Wife, Who Has Left Him Martín Espada
EVENING
The New Yorkers Nikki Giovanni
MacDougal Street Edna St. Vincent Millay
From “Mugging” Allen Ginsberg
From “New York” John Hollander
February Evening in New York Denise Levertov
Body Elite Anne Pierson Wiese
Schubertiana Tomas Tranströmer
Wiseguy Type Herman Spector
Latin Music in New York Jessica Hagedorn
Broadway Carl Sandburg
A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign Vachel Lindsay
September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden
To Brooklyn Bridge Hart Crane
123rd Street Rap Willie Perdomo
NIGHT
When I Heard at the Close at the Close of Day Walt Whitman
Evening on Fifth Avenue Anna Margolin
Street Lamps in Early Spring Gwendolyn Bennett
From “New York American Spell, 2001” Tom Sleigh
Autobiography: New York Melanie Rehak
Snow Fay Chiang
Season of Death Edwin Rolfe
From the Woolworth Tower Sara Teasdale
From “Twenty-One Love Poems” Adrienne Rich
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Derek Walcott
Arriving in the City Franz Wright
City Lyrics Nathaniel Parker Willis
Maria’s Journey Alberto O. Cappas
New York at Night Amy Lowell
From “Desolation Row” Bob Dylan
To New York Léopold Sédar Senghor
Juke Box Love Song Langston Hughes
These Ever Just So Six Million New York Hearts and Dorothy Robert Clairmont
Further Reading
Biographical Details
Chronology of Poems
Index of First Lines
Index of Titles
Index of Poets
