On October 18th at 8 p.m., Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House presents BROKEN LAND: POEMS OF BROOKLYN with poets, Phillis Levin, Andrea Baker, Patricia Spears Jones, and Tom Sleigh.

Brooklyn,
crouching forever in the shadow of Manhattan, is perhaps best known for
a certain bridge or for the world-renowned tackiness of Coney Island.
When it comes to literary history, Brooklyn can also seem dwarfed by
its sister borough-until you take a closer look. As unlikely as it may
sound, for more than two centuries Brooklyn has inspired poets and
poetry. Although there are plenty of poetry anthologies devoted to
specific regions of the United States, Broken Land is the first to focus exclusively on verse that celebrates Brooklyn. And what remarkable verse it is.

Edited
by poets Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Michael Tyrell, this collection of
135 notable poems reveals the many cultural, ethnic, aesthetic, and
religious traditions that have accorded Brooklyn its enduring place in
the American psyche. Dazzling in its selections, Broken Land
offers poetry from the colonial period to the present, including
contributions from the American poets most closely associated with
Brooklyn-Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Marianne Moore-as well as
memorable poems from Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, George Oppen, and Charles Reznikoff. Also included are a
wide range of contemporary works from both established and emerging
poets: Derek Walcott, Galway Kinnell, C.K. Williams, Amy Clampitt,
Martin Espada, Lisa Jarnot, Marilyn Hacker, Tom Sleigh, D. Nurkse,
Donna Masini, Michael S. Harper, Noelle Kocot, Joshua Beckman, and many
others.

With its expansive array of poetic styles and voices, Broken Land
mirrors the borough’s diversity, toughness, and surprising beauty. The
requirements for inclusion in this volume were simple: excellent poems
that pay tribute in some way to the land that Dutch settlers,
translating from the Algonquin, called "Gebroken landt." But it is the
phrase emblazoned on borough billboards that best serves to entice
readers into entering this book: "Welcome to Brooklyn, Like No Other
Place in the World."

Published by NYU Press, it is the first poetry anthology dedicated
exclusively to verse about Brooklyn. Editors Julia Spicher Kasdorf and
Michael Tyrell have culled 135 poems that chart the boroughs long
history as a place of danger and beauty, dreams and disappointment.
Sure, there are several references to Brooklyns bridges and Coney
Islands beaches — and even a few to the Dodgers — but the book also
encompasses a diversity of lives lived among and between the boroughs
icons.
—Brooklyn Daily Eagle

In the excellent and surprising anthology Broken Land,
poets and editors Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Michael Tyrell take a
chronological and panoramic look at the New York borough of Brooklyn as
portrayed in poems.
—Publishers Weekly

"This book
isn’t only for Brooklyn residents but for all those who value
community. . . . Reading this collection is a moving experience because
the poems feel home-grown. It doesn’t matter where they were written,
each one makes Brooklyn come alive, and the poems find a home inside
you."
—From the Foreword by Hal Sirowitz, author of Mother Said