Slow Trains Overhead is a book of incessant crossings and intersections. Reginald Gibbons’s formidable trains resist expedient arrivals as much as they insist on fresh departures—from the present into ‘history,’ our everyday into ‘a different life,’ the elevated tracks and blind alleys of Chicago into the world. These are poems—and prose—that I’m convinced Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell would have loved—and James Joyce, Baudelaire, and Chekhov, too.”
The poems and stories in Reginald Gibbons’s Slow Trains Overhead are a constantly surprising tour through the loveliness and desperation of Chicago. By their attentive listening, they pay homage to the city’s uncountable souls wherever they are to be found—on the map, on the street, at home, in the solitary mind’s eye. This is a necessary, enlivening book by a keen observer with an open spirit who makes impassioned music out of the most ordinary encounters, without cynicism or sentimentality.”
This is some of the most beautiful writing I've encountered in a long time. With Reginald Gibbons as our guide, we find ourselves in the nooks and crannies of Chicago, in garages, on street corners, in apartment buildings, and in the city’s neglected institutions like juvenile court. In this stunning collection of prose and poetry, Gibbons captures intimate and poignant stories that have as their backdrop this large, anonymous metropolis. Anyone who has an investment in the urban experience will find themselves drawn to Slow Trains Overhead.”
"[Gibbons] chronicles the beautiful chaos of his adopted hometown, its furious pace and its powerful history, a history tucked into the creases between the great buildings like a love note left in a school locker."--Julia Keller "Chicago Tribune"
"Slow Trains Overhead is a book of incessant crossings and intersections. Reginald Gibbons's formidable trains resist expedient arrivals as much as they insist on fresh departures--from the present into 'history, ' our everyday into 'a different life, ' the elevated tracks and blind alleys of Chicago into the world. These are poems--and prose--that I'm convinced Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell would have loved--and James Joyce, Baudelaire, and Chekhov, too."
--Robert Polito, author of Hollywood & God (2/1/2010 12:00:00 AM)
"The poems and stories in Reginald Gibbons's Slow Trains Overhead are a constantly surprising tour through the loveliness and desperation of Chicago. By their attentive listening, they pay homage to the city's uncountable souls wherever they are to be found--on the map, on the street, at home, in the solitary mind's eye. This is a necessary, enlivening book by a keen observer with an open spirit who makes impassioned music out of the most ordinary encounters, without cynicism or sentimentality."
--Rosellen Brown (10/12/2009 12:00:00 AM)
"This is some of the most beautiful writing I've encountered in a long time. With Reginald Gibbons as our guide, we find ourselves in the nooks and crannies of Chicago, in garages, on street corners, in apartment buildings, and in the city's neglected institutions like juvenile court. In this stunning collection of prose and poetry, Gibbons captures intimate and poignant stories that have as their backdrop this large, anonymous metropolis. Anyone who has an investment in the urban experience will find themselves drawn to Slow Trains Overhead."
--Alex Kotlowitz, author of Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago (10/5/2009 12:00:00 AM)
Gibbons's latest collection combines new poems and prose with selections from his previous books to create an homage to Chicago. Though he picks up where Carl Sandburg left off, both Gibbons's voice and his project are Whitmanian in scale. "From somewhere," he writes in one of the book's many odes, "a family, a village, a neighborhood, comes// The solitary singer, maybe with a guitar, who pauses with her burdens and sings, or the wayfaring man with a story that began somewhere else." Gibbons (Creatures of a Day) works best within these long, breathy lines, allowing himself to pause and wonder before resolving the thought that set him going. Unlike Whitman, Gibbons is hesitant to reach out to his subjects. At times, one wishes he would do more than pitch "his own voice... and a few coins into the cup" of the homeless he so often observes. Still, Gibbons is unafraid of asking big questions, as in the book's opening poem, in which he wonders why we "even try to list/ the kinds of places/ men and women made/ to make money." (May)
[Gibbons] chronicles the beautiful chaos of his adopted hometown, its furious pace and its powerful history, a history tucked into the creases between the great buildings like a love note left in a school locker.
— Julia Keller
