Sightseer In This Killing City

A fourth collection from a prize-winning poet whose "gift is breathtaking" (Naomi Shihab Nye)

Eugene Gloria's Sightseer in This Killing City captures the surreal and unreal feelings of the present. Poetry's response to difficult questions about the incomprehensible offers language that errs on the side of absurdity. In light of recent presidential elections in the United States and in the Philippines, Gloria's latest collection continues his obsession with arrivals and departures, gun violence, displacement, cultural legacy, and the bitter divisions in America. Through the voice of Nacirema, we are introduced to a character that chooses mystery and inhabits landscapes fraught with brutality and beauty. Gloria quotes melodies from seventies soul and jazz, blending the urban lament of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane with the idiom of Stevie Wonder and Fela Kuti. Sightseer in this Killing City argues for grace and perseverance in the era of bombast and bullies.