Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry since 1975

by Nicholas Christopher (Editor)

Gathers poetry by Diane Ackerman, Judith Baumel, Amy Clampitt, Tom Disch, Mark Doty, Alice Fulton, Debora Greger, Richard Howard, Karl Kirchwey, Susan Mitchell, Carol Muske, Ron Padgett, Jason Shinder, James Tate, David Trinidad, and Carolyne Wright

Genres: Poetry

230 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

Nicholas Christopher was born and raised in New York City. He was educated at Harvard College, where he studied with Robert Lowell and Anthony Hecht. Afterward, he traveled and lived in Europe. He became a regular contributor to the New Yorker in his early twenties, and began publishing his work in other leading magazines, both in the United States and abroad, including Esquire, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, and the Paris Review. He has appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Poetry, the Paris Review 50th Anniversary Anthology, the Best American Poetry, Poet's Choice, the Everyman's Library Poems of New York and Conversation Pieces, the Norton Anthology of Love, the Faber Book of Movie Verse, and the Grand Street Reader. He has edited two major anthologies himself, Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (Anchor, 1989) and Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975 (Scribner, 1994) and has translated Martial and Catullus and several modern Greek poets, including George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos. His books have been translated and published many other countries, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from various institutions, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Yale, Barnard College, and New York University, and is now a Professor on the permanent faculty of the Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Constance Christopher, and continues to travel widely, most frequently to Venice, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and the Grenadines.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry since 1975 expecting it to be more or less Everyman's Poems of New York with a wider focus and a more contemporary (well, 20th century) angle, which I thought would result in a vital and edgy anthology of poems of what life is truly like in the big city. It turns out I was half right.

Editor Nicholas Christopher collected 115 poems from sixty poets - including, one notes, three from himself - which he chooses to arrange alphabetically by author rather than thematically or by city. While I understand his reasoning, I actually think I would have enjoyed exploring the works more grouped into regions and tasting the different flavors of Chicago, Detroit, or LA as presented by the various poets. As it was, the quality of the volume seemed to degrade as it went on, which seems odd given the alphabetical arrangement, so it's possible that I just started losing interest in the concept.

Although I appreciated Christopher focusing on contemporary (more or less) poets and not simply trotting out the same old Sandburg poems about Chicago, overall I found this particular selection more mildly uninspiring than wild, so I doubt I'll be taking this particular Walk again.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

60 poets, many of them well-published, familiar names, mixed with less well-known poets, contributed 115 poems to this anthology. The editor deliberately chose not to group the poems by specific city or region; the collection is arranged alphabetically by writer. Christopher used only work by American poets writing about or in American cities, and in his intro he discussed why he chose the year 1975.

In the interest of full disclosure, I enjoy themed anthologies. I almost always discover writers whose work I want to explore further, as well as enjoy the rhythm of familiar poets. This collection held far more hits than misses, although there were a few poems where I struggled to find anything specifically urban. There are poems I return to, lines that catch in my throat, take my breath, make me stop and close the book. It would be difficult to quote from or even list all of my favorites, and I feel a bit guilty mentioning just a few. Following is a sampling.

Many of the poems describe scenes found while walking through a city.
and there on the corner of Thirty-fourth and Fifth,
the man with the saxophone,
his fingerless gloves caked with grime,
his face also,
the layers of clothes welded to his skin.
(The Man with the Saxophone, Ai)

Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers’ windows.
(Broadway, Mark Doty)

Closest to the exit, rainbow trout examining the snow
That falls like bait, like a hundred vowels
In search of a language.
(The Consequences of Waking, by Vickie Karp)

There are poems that deal with crime.
The quarter-moon goes blank
Behind a cloud. He frames a picture
In his head, retraces his footsteps
To Shorty’s liquor store.
He will go in this time.
(The Cage Walker, Yusef Komunyakaa)

Carol Muske takes us on a kindergarten field trip.
Downtown, on the precinct wall,
hangs the map of Gang Territories,
blocks belonging to the red Bloods
or blue Crips.
(Field Trip, Carol Muske)

One of my absolute favorites:
The night we bailed out Jolene from Riker’s Island
tumbleweeds in such multitudes were blowing through the dark
it might almost have been Wyoming.

She’d turned larceny
against the bureaucracy into an art form.
When they raised the subway fare and simultaneously
cut back on Human Resources, Jolene
began jumping turnstiles as a matter of principle.
(Amaranth and Moly, Amy Clampett)

One of the most poignant poems in this collection is PBS, by Robert Mazzocco.
The ferries go out with the bodies from the morgue,
on a cool winter’s day, the ferries go out,
carrying off the bodies of strangers, who have been found,
desolate and alone, lost in the heart of the city.

Mazzocco goes on to describe Rikers Island inmates digging graves for burial in Potters Field.

Walk on the Wild Side is a wonderful collection of poetry that pulses with heartbeat of America’s cities.

[Meen · Rating 2 out of 5]

7/19: Yep, completely different experience. And it went from four stars to two, so my poetry tastes have apparently changed. I think the problem is I'm just not digging the themed anthology thing. There were some poems that I really liked (Molly Peacock's "Buffalo" and James Tate's "What the City Was Like," but many of them weren't at all captivating, and a couple of them made me write things in the margins like "What a pretentious ass!" and "I do not get the editor's love of this guy." There were times I had difficulty concentrating on the poems. I thought it could be because I was mostly reading this on the Metro to and from DC every day, but then there would be a captivating one and the Metro and all its distractions would fall away. So, no, it was just the writing!

6/29: Second book in the summer poetry-thon. So I rated this already, which means I must've read it, though I don't really remember... I'm pretty sure I got this the first year I was sober, so it's been a decade. Should be a completely different experience now.