Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence

by Sarah Green (Editor)

Overview

How to live with difference—not necessarily in peace, but with resilience, engagement, and a lack of vitriol—is a defining worry in America at this moment. The poets, fiction writers, and essayists (plus one graphic novelist) who contributed to Welcome to the Neighborhood don’t necessarily offer roadmaps to harmonious neighboring. Some of their narrators don’t even want to be neighbors. Maybe they grieve, or rage. Maybe they briefly find resolution or community. But they do approach the question of what it means to be neighbors, and how we should do it, with open minds and nuance.

The many diverse contributors give this collection a depth beyond easy answers. Their attentions to the theme of neighborliness as an ongoing evolution offer hope to readers: possible pathways for rediscovering community, even just by way of a shared wish for it. The result is an enormously rich resource for the classroom and for anyone interested in reflecting on what it means to be American today, and how place and community play a part.

Contributors include Leila Chatti, Rita Dove, Jonathan Escoffery, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Amina Gautier, Ross Gay, Mark Halliday, Joy Harjo, Edward Hirsch, Marie Howe, Sonya Larson, Dinty W. Moore, Robert Pinsky, Christine Schutt, and many more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804012171
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sarah Green is the author of Earth Science (421 Atlanta, 2016). A Pushcart Prize winner, New Women’s Voices Series Prize winner, and one of the Best New Poets 2012, she is currently at work on her second collection of poetry. She teaches at St. Cloud State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Sarah Green
Foreword by David Baker

“There Are Birds Here”, Jamaal May
“Hungry”, David Baker
“I’m A Stranger Here Myself”, Gail Mazur
“My Summer Next Door to the Serial Killer”, Katrina Vandenberg
“Tonight”, Ladan Osman
“Watch”, Gary Jackson
“Neighborhood Watch”, Dora Malech
“Shelter”, Sarah Einstein
“The House on Congress Street”, Amy Yelin
“The Invincible”, Jonathan Escoffery
“Occupants”, James Miranda
“Daystar”, Rita Dove
“House Near the Airport”, Wayne Miller
“Aubade in the Old Apartment”, Leila Chatti
“House Hunting”, Lloyd Schwartz
“Writing the Kingdom on Skates”, Geri Lipschultz
“Religion”, Christine Schutt
“The Summer of the Commune, and Some of the Summers Before That”, Brad Aaron Modlin
“Some Rules for Foraging”, Marco Wilkinson
“To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian”, Ross Gay
“The Neighborhood Hawk”, D.R. McClure
“Some Kind of Sisyphus”, Becca J.R. Lachman
“Intimate Selenium”, Phoebe Wayne
“The Woman Who Was a House”, Sarah Layden
“Exteriors”, Seth Stewart
“Vanquished”, Andrena Zawinski
“Old”, Douglas Currier
“How to Get Back to Chester”, Edward Hirsch
“Name & Address”, Donald Platt
“Late?”, David Rivard
“Animals”, Katie Peterson
“The Street”, Robert Pinsky
“Reading Celan in a Subway Station”, Carolina Ebeid
“Fire Island”, Linda Bamber
“Gay Marriage Poem”, Jenny Johnson
“Marriage”, Nicole Callihan
“Forest Ridge Farms Nocturne”, Sean M. Conrey
“Pornograph, with Americana”, Jaswinder Bolina
“Doorstep”, Leora Fridman
“Upon Hearing About the Student Arrested at the Gun Shop”, Katie Berta
“Free Variation on ‘Saturday Night in the Village’”, David Blair
“The Population”, Peter Campion
“Neighborhood”, Betsy Brown
“Song for the Festival”, Gretchen Marquette
“The Heater Repair Woman”, Matthew Siegel
“Blizzard Poem” Aaron Devine
“City Morning”, Rebecca Morgan Frank
“Middle Class Love Song”, Josephine Yu
“Announcement: The Theme of Tonight’s Party Has Been Changed”, Dana Roeser
“My Neighbors: I Know Them”, Lauren Camp
“Fireflies”, Kip Robisch
“As I Wander”, Amina Gautier
“Neighbor”, Jarod Roselló
“Thanksgiving: Livingston, New Jersey”, Katherine Hollander
“You Know How It Is”, Steve Brykman
“Meteor Dreams”, Eson Kim
“Racism in America: The Official Report”, Dinty W. Moore
“American Valentine”, Tomás Q. Morín
“A Map of the World”, Jennifer De Leon
“Path to Nowhere”, Jill McDonough
“Not Trash Day”, Claire Eder
“A Small Guest”, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
“Arrest Dance”, C.E. Fort
“War Game, America”, Nomi Stone
“Steel Valley Songbook, Vol.1”, Daniel B. Johnson
“Assembly”, Sarah Green
“Sometimes You Know Before You Know”, Danielle Jones
“God Speaks Through the Seals”, Sarah Harwell
“Heidelberg Beach”, David Young
“Winchendon”, Mark Halliday
“Neighbors”, Richard Hoffman
“The Kindest”, Sonya Larson
“Excerpt from ‘My City in Two Dog Parks’”, Brian Trapp
“Camp and Locust”, Fred Marchant
“Bete Noire Ranch”, Liz Stephens
“The Real West”, Rebecca Lindenberg
“The Summer of Whooping Cough”, Tara Lynn Masih
“the war of all against all”, Dylan Krieger
“Into the Limen: Where an Old Squirrel Goes to Die”, Sarah Minor
“Neighbor”, Connie Voisine
“Cottage Industry”, Lynne Viti
“Valediction”, Tom Sleigh
“What the Living Do”, Marie Howe
“Perhaps the World Ends Here”, Joy Harjo

Editorial Reviews

Welcome to the Neighborhood answers our urgent need for a contemporary examination of the complex connections between individuality and collectivity, between person and place. This book is exceptional and necessary.”—Erica Dawson, author of When Rap Spoke Straight to God

From the Publisher