Abandon Automobile

poems like distilled scenes from the grey of a city whose lettuce days are just stories of a drunk at a vet’s bar

poems whose hope defies common sense

poems like old friends loves memories that haunt with each page turned

poems that pull threads out of the collective conscience of a place

this is Abandon Automobile Detroit City Poetry 2001

Abandon Automobile edited by melba Joyce Boyd and m l liebler is

comprehensive in covering detroit poetry over the last four decades

the poems

tell the story of what the city is to the authors

how it changes them in

their lives

or just plain says here have a slice of pie

it tastes just like your grandmother’s

and it doesn’t matter anymore

the incinerator

the assembly plants deserted

the murders

the vernors plant

the alive blackbottom

the regentrified

the never will be gentrified

streets that don’t see snow plows

for better or worse detroit infects its writers

like a siren in this old port town

like andrei codrescu writes (p.99)

“& it’s true

in a way i was born here

born an american here

an american without a car

in motor city

born in detroit oddly enough

but never regretfully”

—Jason Kohser

Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry 2001. Eds. Melba Joyce Boyd and M.L. Liebler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Diverse, dynamic, and defiant—this ambitious anthology of poetry as resistance includes the words of many past and current friends of and contributors to the Fifth Estate, including: William Boyer, Andrei Codrescu, Maurice Greenia, Jim Gustafson, Kevin Rashid, Marilynn Rashid, John Sinclair, David Watson, and others.