I always thought that Frank O’Hara was really a modern Catullus, transported to cast a naughty eye over NYC, so who is Rick Snyder? I suppose Lucretius is one guess, with his observant materialism, tonal modesty and plain living, but there’s also humour here, the irony of Aristophanes, bouncing through Bakhtin, Deleuze and Plato. Then there’s the hints of a pastoral Theocritus landed in Tennessee. Euripides, Catullus as well . . . he’s a poet with more than one string to his classical bow, but then there’s Wordsworth, and Ashbery, and even Basho and yes, O’Hara playing through these flash card collages and lyrical odes and oddities, atomistic instances and grand speculations. In short measure we traverse a universe of contemporary ephemera and centuries of lyric play. What remains constant here is the magic of wit and the living eye that makes lyric poetry live on every page. —Martin Corless-Smith In sly and witty lyrics, Rick Snyder forges elegies out of the neon debris of neo-liberal America. His cityscapes are simultaneously ironic and sublime, a balancing act only possible through his exacting craft and pitch-perfect ear. The poems in Here City are self-aware, reflexive, and full of wily surprise. —Joanna Fuhrman
