Friday, April 2, 2021

Prose to Poetry

 Prose to Poetry

 From the lady in the psychiatric ward to the man in Shea Stadium, Doug Holder describes the curious essence of otherwise mundanely odd people. “As a kid, I always wondered about the man in the small booth in the middle of the Midtown Tunnel,” he writes in the prelude to the first poem of his newest book, “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel.” In this collection, the poet’s gaze spans New York and the greater Boston area as he observes his characters with attentive and probing eyes. Holder recounts absurd moments in the miserably ordinary lives that constellate his world. He uses these stories as a sort of social critique of today’s humdrum realities, engaging a universal longing for something beyond the banal.


The  lady in the psychiatric ward

a curious essence of the mundane

 The Man in the Booth

in the Midtown Tunnel

a recount

of miserably ordinary lives

they long for something

above

beyond

the banal.