Second Oldest: A Poetic History of Philadelphia

Blythe Davenport’s mastery of the intricate and unexpected image guides us back and forth from past to present in her poetic portraits of the Philadelphia landscape. She fills her poems with voices, places, and lines like ‘the sun flexes his supernova arm, punching/a perfect round brilliant/in the bruised evening sky.’ This is a book well worth reading and rereading for its informed voice, its subtlety, its grace. - Donna Wolf-Palacio, author of What I Don’t Know