City Poems and American Urban Crisis

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