City Bird and Other Poems: City Lights Spotlight Series No 24

(Paperback)

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Description

An underground denizen of San Francisco soars above it in a state-of-the-art long poem.

Over a decade ago, Patrick James Dunagan stoically refused to be published in the Spotlight series, citing his desire to maintain critical independence as a prolific reviewer of contemporary poetry. Finally, he has been prevailed upon to turn over a manuscript, City Bird and Other Poems. Defying the media narrative of the city's demise, the poems of City Bird celebrate the joys of San Francisco, invoking artists like Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, poets like Bill Berkson and Lew Welch, and local landmarks like O'Farrell Street, St. Anne of the Sunset, and Thrasher magazine, all the while foregrounding Dunagan's lightly worn erudition.

But the book stands on its lengthy title poem, a tour de force combining composition and collage, filtered through the poet's laid-back lyricism. Unapologetically literary with its understated formal imperatives, City Bird is at once a self-referential poetics, examining itself unfolding, and a stream-of-consciousness narrative of Hugh, the nominal protagonist, seemingly engaged in eating a sandwich. Proustian in its sweep, even as it courts a ludicrous Beckett-like minimalism, the poem takes sidelong glances at our contemporary political malaise, while contemplating consciousness itself. If Ashbery had written "The Skaters" about skateboarders, it might have come out very like City Bird. A major achievement in contemporary American poetry, City Bird further confirms Dunagan's reputation as the best-kept secret of San Francisco.

"Nothing is left unseen, including present memories years before with friends, or a dramatic monologue through recent readership, receiving everyone's voices into a huge collage . . . City Bird is all this and more. A meditation and intense easy stroll through a poet's city and all the things that make up a gorgeous life within it, listening and living."Micah Ballard, author of Waifs and Strays

Reviews

Praise for City Bird:

I do notice that Hughs sandwich comes exactly 100 years after Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, that it is exactly the same page-length as Pounds poem, and comes also exactly 100 years after the Spanish flu pandemic. If all that is coincidence, then I am going to open a bottle of Oban and drink it all tonight. In fact, I think you are fucking with us, Patrick, and you were aware of the clear connections when you wrote it. Otherwise, there ARE Martians and Yeatsian spooks. The ghost of Helen Adam is there at the foot of your bed, holding up the screaming, severed head of Ezra Pound.Kent Johnson, author of Because of Poetry I Have a Really Big House

Praise for Patrick James Dunagan:

Dunagans primary musical vehicle can probably be most closely compared with Creeley, in that he uses loosely defined, variegated patterns to shape and pace his thoughts, in series of lines and stanzas of comparable lengths. . . . It is nuance where the magic happens in this poetry, and probably in all poetry. . . . Its philosophical paradises, if they exist, are not clearly defined, but the images contained in its rhythms invite repeated investigations, as the best modern poetry always has.James Yeary, Rain Taxi

Author Bio

Patrick James Dunagan holds an MA/MFA in Poetics from the now defunct New College of California, where he studied with David Meltzer, Tom Clark, and Joanne Kyger. Hes author of many poetry collections, including Drops of Rain/Drops of Wine (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), Sketch of the Artist (FMSBW, 2018), and After the Banished (Empty Bowl, 2022), as well as a book of criticism, The Duncan Era (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). Additionally, he has served as editor for David Meltzers Rock Tao (Lithic, 2022), among other titles. He reviews regularly for Rain Taxi, and works as a library assistant at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco. He has lived in San Francisco for over 20 years.