What is the City?
by Paul Marion

ISBN: 0-9777885-2-0

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"What is the city but the people?" asks Sicinius in Shakespeare's Coriolanus. In these poems, meet the people in Paul Marion's real and imagined city: Manny and Maria, Jimmy Allen, Dr. Doug, Arthur at the diner, Johnny Depp, Katherine O'Donnell Murphy, Bobby Orr, Uncle Dan, Dith Pran, Memere, Harry Calahan, the Chest-Pants Brothers, Mickie Shannon, Pinky, Jack Kerouac, dancing Mary, George and Thida, Alphonse Hudon, Hollywood's Frances Marion, Arshile Gorky, Bob Dylan, and Our Lady of the Bathtub. That's a start.

Beyond the poems, Marion explores the meaning and uses of poetry in his essay "Pure and Applied Poetry". He writes, "Writing, publishing, and reading poetry with a community in mind can help strenghen a person's sense of belonging to a place and fortify the social glue....In a healthy democratic society people feel a common bond, believe in a shared fate, and act accordingly. Establishing that spirit in the community close at hand is the first step toward nurturing a greater empathy for the global community, whose survival is our ultimate concern."
What People Are Saying
"Paul Marion's are poems of substance...In reading these works I got the same feeling that I would get from Stafford or Snyder..." --Stony Hills

"Marion approaches his poetry more as an historian or anthropologist...[His] poetry has a strong sense of place." --The Boston Globe

About the Author
Paul Marion is the author of several collections of poetry and editor of Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac. He lives in Lowell, Massachusetts, with his family.