Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown. Este artículo no está disponible.Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown

Poetry. The 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. 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. Civic poetry is poems written for the public on community topics; poetry accessible to an attentive, general audience. And since it is often meant to be read in public, civic poetry relies on sound and familiar forms: rhyming tricks, assonance, consonance, regular rhythms, refrain and stanza, couplets, etc. And of course, civic poetry, like all poetry, is insightful, well-crafted and fresh, never talks down, and is never watered down.

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.

John J. Ronan is a poet, playwright and journalist. He is also president of American Storyboard, Inc., a non-profit (501c3) media production company. A previous book of poetry, Marrowbone Lane, was published by the Backwaters Press; in 2010 it was named a "Highly Recommended" book by the Boston Authors Club. Ronan has appeared in scores of national magazines and reviews, including New England Review, Three Penny Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Hollins Critic, and Notre Dame Review, and is a former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Literature. He is also a former Poet Laureate of Gloucester, MA, where he lives with his wife, Sandy.