Manhattan Melody

by Patricia Faith Polak

Overview

Patricia Faith Polak is an adventurous world traveler whose experiences have led her to appreciate the island she calls home, and now to poetically reflect on the beauty and cultural diversity of Manhattan.

Polaks varied verse not only explores the past as hot cocoa is sipped at Schraffts and a nickels worth of macaroni and cheese is devoured at the Automat, but also reflects on present day as an indigo sky illuminates the city, the sun glows on the tree-shaded paving cobbles outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a park near the East River welcomes nannies, a grassy caf in Greenwich Village lures guests, a chic gallery on the Lower East Side hosts an opening, and as a redhead looks expectantly toward a paper-capped soda jerk in an Edward Hopper painting.

Manhattan Melody shares fifty contemporary reflections from an award-winning poet that share a fresh perspective on the beauty and diversity that surrounds a New York island.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781480853881
Publisher:	Archway Publishing
Publication date:	11/17/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	116
File size:	342 KB

About the Author

Patricia Faith Polak holds a master of arts in writing and a master of fine arts. When she is not traveling, she works in investments and writes award-winning poetry. Patricias adventures have taken her from the Middle East to North Africa and to spending two eventful years in Eastern Europe and the then Soviet Union. She and her husband now call New York home.

Editorial Reviews

2018-02-21
A debut collection of eccentric poetry about New York City.Countless writers have tackled the idiosyncrasies of the island of Manhattan. In Polak's work, however, Manhattan is a palimpsestic place of lived experience and overwhelming melancholy for days past: "A Manhattan moonrise hangs above / the skyscrapered city / like a snowball tossed by a perturbed Rip Van Winkle," she writes. The specificity of Polak's references, which may not be transparent to everyone, provides the text with a gentle veneer of poetic effervescence. She goes on to describe details that quintessentially capture the locale: "City blocks with donuteries, druggeries, and dry cleaners; / air temperate, as if March had rinsed it, / pounded it against the travertine on skyscrapers / until it was like a favored pair of jeans." Polak knows the rhythms of New Yorkers' feet on the sidewalk; she's one of them. The juxtaposition of New York stories with the poet's invested, compelling, and exciting voice effectively creates a self-sufficient poetic universe. Verse about Manhattan is no novelty, and it often must refer to what's been written about the city before. But Polak's work doesn't need additional context; her accounts of New York as she's experienced it are surprisingly complete on their own and have the force of their own convictions: "Sounds of the city in snowfall / muffle or grow tinny thin. / Then comes the grating noise / of the unmucking metropolis, / the Department of Sanitation's / mechanized onslaught." Readers who've lived in New York will surely recognize themselves in these poems.A riveting look at one woman's relationship with the city that never sleeps.

Kirkus Reviews