A Month of Someday

Because A Month of Someday doesn't waste a word, I'm tempted to quote lavishly from these wry, economical, limpidly attentive urban observations recorded during the most frightening month early in the pandemic. But I won't. Every poem here merits quoting-and rereading. Gerald Wagoner's eye misses nothing; his quiet voice is a chorus of one that reaches beyond self to his city. This is a book that remembers, and also a book to remember. Read it.

-Rachel Hadas



Strolling daily through altered and stunned Brooklyn neighborhoods in A Month of Someday, Gerald Wagoner is our perceptive weatherman and curious guide to the monstrous first April of New York City's pandemic, where "Mary Shelley, anime monster in her pocket, gathers fresh flowers to toss down a well." Wagoner maps the missing city and its transformed condition that includes us, in reverent lyrics and vivid micro narratives, with a keen and attentive negative capability.

-Amy Holman