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

"These poems about San Francisco challenge the media narrative of a city in decline, paying tribute to its joys. Dunagan weaves in allusions to artists, including Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, poets Bill Berkson and Lew Welch, and local landmarks O'Farrell Street and St. Anne of the Sunset."-Publishers Weekly

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.

About the Author

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. He's 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 Meltzer's 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.

Reviews

Praise for City Bird:

"Patrick James Dunagan's City Bird & Other Poems grasps at the house of mirrors that are the thoughts and images which alternately batter and balm us daily. He's not especially looking to make any ultimate sense or find any golden order but simply to catalog and observe-Zen-like-the myriad flashes on his mindscreen."-Lee Ranaldo, artist, founding member of Sonic Youth

"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

"Patrick James Dunagan is a champion of San Francisco poetics, both as an editor and a poet, and City Bird and Other Poems is a certain cause for celebration. Poems become embodied conversation with the city's literary cosmos: resurrected voices of poets, aerials of city streets and landscapes. Irreverent and real City Bird is a book where the poems are life, and the maps are terrain."- Mary Catherine Kinniburgh, author of Wild Intelligence: The Politics of Knowledge and Postwar American Poets' Libraries

"Reveals him as the most San Francisco of contemporary poets, riffing off a rich history of current and historic San Francisco poets, artists and landmarks including Bill Berkson, Lew Welch, Joanne Kyger, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, O'Farrell Street and St. Anne of the Sunset."-Rob McLennan

"I do notice that Hugh's sandwich [aka City Bird] comes exactly 100 years after 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,' that it is exactly the same page-length as Pound's 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

Book Information
ISBN 9780872869332
Author Patrick James Dunagan
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint City Lights Books
Publisher City Lights Books