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 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, ...