Floating City: Poems

Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

by Anne Pierson Wiese

Anne Pierson Wiese's first collection of poems illuminates the everyday and the lessons to be learned amid life's routines. The poems in Floating City might be called poetry of place. Many are set in New York City, but they simultaneously inhabit a realm in which a mundane physical location or daily exchange can be seen to have human significance beyond the immediate. When one dismisses from one's mind the idea that going to the park, doing the laundry, buying a sandwich, and riding the subway are familiar experiences, one makes room for the actual to ally with the hypothetical by means of the emotions. The result, Wiese eloquently shows, is a form of truth that is silently generated whenever human beings earnestly endeavor to absorb the world.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[elise amaryllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
I was bored by this collection at the start, but I’m glad I continued: the poems start to get brilliant in part two, and part three is phenomenal as well. I also like that this collection is pretty light. While I love moody, brooding poetry, this was a welcome break and I give her credit for making her book beautiful without an emphasis or overeliance on pain.
(despite this sentiment, my favorite poems are probably the moodiest ones in here.)

some of my favorites:

- All Night Long
- Hermit Coming Out of the Forest
- In the Beginning (!!!)
- Early Bird
- Gift Basket for a Madman (!!!)
- Wind Farm (!!!)
- Season's Greetings from South Dakota (!!!)
- You Are Here

some quotes:

"There are many people who spend their night
on the subway trains. Often one encounters
them on the morning commute, settled in corners,
coats over their head, ragged possessions heaped
around themselves, trying to remain in their own night.

The man was already up, bracing himself against
the motion of the train as he folded his blanket
the way my mother taught me, and donned his antique blazer,
his elderly, sleep-soft eyes checking for the total effect.

Whoever you are—tell me what unforgiving series
of moments has added up to this one: a man
making himself presentable to the world in front
of the world, as if life has revealed to him the secret
that all our secrets from one another are imaginary."
—Tell Me

"They find him on the floor, curled around his horn,
talking to it as if it were a drunken date
or a friend threatening suicide, pale
and unshaven. When they try to pick him up,
brush the New York studio dust off is clothes
(never spruce at the best of times), he pours
through their musicians' hands like water
or song. Improvisation is what matter
to him—finding the out, then walking back in the door
when least expected. But life on those terms
teaches too much about absence, how a tune's abrupt
close at three minutes can hide your failings
from everyone but you, how those 78s
spin into darkness grooved with distance from home."
—Beiderbecke, Leon Bismarck "Bix," 1903-1931

"When the phone call comes I am on my knees
in the bathroom scrubbing the tub. The bath mat
is inadequate protection against
the tiles, as well as being damp. Damp blue
towel, hard blue floor, knees that feel sore
more quickly than they used to. Hoped for,
but not expected, the call represents
a miracle—never mind what kind—fill in
the blank: money, love, success—whatever
you've tried at 3 A.M. not to cover,
and failed. So here I am, bent like any soldier
to protect my vitals, accustomed to the daily
digging in—it's the surprise of change that makes
good fortune and bad luck feel the same."
—Discovery

[Inna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"But life on those terms teaches too much about absence, how a tune's abrupt close at three minutes can hide your failings from everyone but you, how those 78s spin into darkness grooved with the distance from home."

A very enjoyable poetry collection to finish at the start of the new year. I really enjoyed feeling how Wiese sees the city of New York and how it influences her life as a whole. I'm still very 'new' to reading poetry again but I enjoyed many of the works here.

[Brian Want · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant collection of poems on urban living, filled with small moments that unfurl and hang briefly in the air. While some tilt too anodyne in carefully elevating the mundane, most offer a good pause. This type of floating, quiet musing will be familiar to attentive city dwellers.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm really pleased that the first book I finished in 2019 is this lovely, lyrical collection of thoughtful, big-hearted, surprising poems. I will want to reread this soon.

[Angie Fehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner of the Walt Whitman Award, Floating City is a very pleasing first collection of poems. Wiese was born in Minnesota but raised in Brooklyn. She brings a naturalist’s attention to the urban ecosystem, studying what others overlook, finding wonder in what others find inconvenient or intrusive. Busboys who spill tea on occupied tabletops to clean the table. Homeless people whose bodies sprawl across subway seats or whose carts of stuff fill valuable standing space. A stranger from one part of town who shows up in another part of a town. Junk only temporarily rescued from the garbage re-strewn into new abandonment by second-thought rescuers. Apt descriptions abound: “the plane came down on uneven stairs.” “Improvisation is what matters / to him—finding the out, then walking back in the door / when least expected.” On a young actor studying his lines on the train: “The soft folds of his throat / ripple as if words are pebbles and memory / water.” That stranger from one part of town discovered in another, his “face in the crowd shone back like a private moon.” What Wiese observes of a cluster of restaurants is true of this fine collection, “Whatever you’ve done or undone, there’s a dish for you / to take out or eat in: spice for courage, sweet for chagrin.”

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Light and farious, but with a punch! A delicate walk with words down a country road - good company!

[Mills College Library]

811.6 W6511f 2007