Blue Collar Holiday: &, a Valentine to Frank O'Hara

Poetry. This book is Jeni Olin’s first full collection of poems. It includes original full-color drawings by Larry Rivers. The rapidly disappearing New York landscape gleams afresh in Jeni Olin’s wonderfully caustic and vulnerable lyrics. As she reflects on how ‘the Manhattan dusk shots that accompany the Welcome Back Kotter theme song leave sadder than the death of a friend, ’ the city comes in focus, paradoxically, ‘like Kleenex on a sidewalk in the rain.’ Olin’s voice is both raw and strangely accommodating. This is a marvelous debut.-John Ashber