Here City

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 humor 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



Rick Snyder is an archaeologist of alienation. His poetry sifts the debris of our current predicament through classical and New American filters and makes us acutely aware that what we expect or want most from the world nearly always evades us. "In medias res came and went / like an accident / exists when it ends." Each strange artifact he unearths puts us at a loss. Its "trace haunts you but leaves no feeling." Here City is further evidence that this poet of spare, taut lines deserves careful attention. -John Tipton



Rick Snyder is the author of Escape from Combray (Ugly Duckling, 2009) and six chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Conduit, Fence, jubilat, LIT, Posit, and other journals, as well as in the Poetry Society of America's Poem-A-Day project and the syndicated column American Life in Poetry. He is also a translator and scholar. His translations of ancient poetry have appeared in Circumference, jubilat, Ping Pong, and other journals, and his articles on modern and contemporary poetry and translation have appeared in Jacket, Occasion, and Radical Society. He currently lives in Long Beach, California, and is an assistant teaching professor in the classics department at the University of California, Irvine.