“Lucas Hunt’s NEW YORK generously comprehends the city. One poem speaks of a homeless couple encamped under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway; another describes the “Edge” skydeck high over Hudson Yards. In between these extremes, we meet a cobbler, a tailor, a barber, and a busking trumpeter—all sketched freshly in Hunt’s grammatically compressed and thoughtfully textured lines. Drawing on the spirit of earlier New York poets from Walt Whitman and Emma Lazarus to Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara, and James Merrill, this book is a welcome addition to the poetry of our great metropolis.” —Timothy Steele, Guggenheim winning poet of Toward the Winter Solstice
"NEW YORK places readers among the criss-cross of intentions and architecture and cobblestones. Hunt captures the city with loving attention and open-hearted verses, joining a long line of poets who bring their poetic voice and vision to the greatest city in the world.” —Ben Fama, poet of Death Wish
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“In this lyrical, brilliant volume of verse, Lucas Hunt dissects the city, spilling into these visionary poems—the passion, solitude, greed, suffering, mischief, and recognition of death that makes all love possible, for places as well as people." —Simon Van Booy, author of Night Came With Many Stars
“In the tradition of Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler, NEW YORK is bright, spare, and subtly textured, exploring the personal and cultural realities of a city where infinite kinds of lives are possible.” —Stephanie Berger, poet of Interior Femme
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“In this timeless portrait of mythic and pedestrian desires, Hunt's reflections sparkle and glow with the effervescence of a Champagne toast.” —The Kenyon Phillips
“An imagistic journey through the city. Hunt's lyricism sings as a ‘chorus of muses’ enchanted by brutal and beautiful architecture. From rivers to avenues to bridges, Hunt shows the imperfect love of a place.”— Michelle Whittaker, poet of Surge
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“The poet tackles the big, dirty, American city, launching a garbage barge on Heraclitus’s river, floating whole buildings, flower petals, church bells… a meditation on what the soul contains.”
—Matthew Frazier poet of Original Message
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“Tender and stirring… Like an urban prophet, Hunt maps with mournful beauty a city at war and at one with itself.” —Erik Liberman, author of Luminous Life
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“From humble cobblers to tailors and street musicians, NEW YORK brims with whimsical life and trenchant beauty. A vibrant peek into the far corners of the city and its dreamers.” —Ken Malatesta
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"In NEW YORK, Lucas Hunt builds the city out of words, inviting the reader into an enthralling world." —Olena Jennings, poet of Songs from an Apartment
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“A lyrical journey through city streets, where the wandering poet stands at the cross roads of empire.” —Jane Anderson, poet of No More Masters, No More Manuscripts
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“Poems of noir intensity, interiority and intellect, where images flash like cinematic shadows.”
—Julie Sheehan, Whiting Award-winning poet of Orient Point
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“Mr. Hunt puts a poem together without wasting a word; economical, descriptive, his poems bristle with energy, and are a pleasure to read.” —The East Hampton Star
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"Lucas Hunt's poems are like that girl you locked eyes with on the L train that inspired your first novel times a thousand.” —Jill Bumby of The Bumby's
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