Nate Mickelson is Assistant Professor of English and City Seminar Coordinator at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, City University of New York, USA.

A refreshing text which uses poetry about the city as an entry point to engage the imagination in understanding cities and also imagining what they could be … Nate Mickelson has created an inspiring text that can help empower readers and their communities … a worthwhile read for planners, poets, community activists and anyone wishing to be inspired to create the existing and future worlds in their mind.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviations Introduction: City Poems and American Urban Crisis1. Writing Around Williams: Paterson and Experimental Urban Poetics2. Community and Crisis in Los Angeles Poetry3. The “Curious” Languages of New York: George Oppen and Critical Urban Theory4. Reading “Bronzeville”: Poetics of Neighborhood I5. Organizing “El Barrio” and the “Loisaida”: Poetics of Neighborhood II6. Poetry and Progressive PlanningReferencesIndex

Nate Mickelson is Assistant Professor of English and City Seminar Coordinator at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, City University of New York, USA.

A refreshing text which uses poetry about the city as an entry point to engage the imagination in understanding cities and also imagining what they could be … Nate Mickelson has created an inspiring text that can help empower readers and their communities … a worthwhile read for planners, poets, community activists and anyone wishing to be inspired to create the existing and future worlds in their mind.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviations Introduction: City Poems and American Urban Crisis1. Writing Around Williams: Paterson and Experimental Urban Poetics2. Community and Crisis in Los Angeles Poetry3. The “Curious” Languages of New York: George Oppen and Critical Urban Theory4. Reading “Bronzeville”: Poetics of Neighborhood I5. Organizing “El Barrio” and the “Loisaida”: Poetics of Neighborhood II6. Poetry and Progressive PlanningReferencesIndex