#title Abandon Automobile
#author Fifth Estate Collective
Jason Kohser
#SORTauthors Fifth Estate Collective ;Jason Kohser;
#date 2002
#source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/357-summer-2002/abandon-automobile]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2021-05-10
#notes Fifth Estate #357, Summer 2002
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.